


Reversed

by playwithdinos



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, Lucio Lives, The Bad Timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-06-18 20:13:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playwithdinos/pseuds/playwithdinos
Summary: One year ago, Asra the magician killed the Countess Nadia before fleeing the city, and Doctor Julian Devorak cured Count Lucio of the plague. Since then, the count has ruled Vesuvia with an iron fist, and while the Doctor has found a way to prolong the life of the plague victims, the city still withers as he tries, and fails, to remember how he saved the count.Until the night that Asra himself shows up on Julian's doorstep—only to find the Doctor himself absent, and his assistant there instead.--An AU based offthis tumblr postbycedarmoons.





	1. Cold Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Arcana Role Reveral AU](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/401607) by cedarmoons. 



> Friendly reminder that this particular sandbox was created by [cedarmoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons/pseuds/cedarmoons) and she is kind enough to let me play in it. Also, to occasionally beta when I'm not too impatient to wait for it, for which I am immeasurably grateful.

One month after she is brought to Doctor Devorak, Kai runs away.

She is… angry. Angry that he is leaving  _again_ , and forbidding her from following. Frustrated with herself, that her mouth will not form sounds into words and she cannot even  _tell_ him how she feels.

_“_ I have to go to the palace _,”_ he tells her as he throws on his cloak with shaking hands _._ “I’m sorry, Kai. I’ll be back as soon as I can—just… just stay in your room. Alright?”

She can’t tell him that she’s scared. That when he’s not there, her only company are patients with empty plague-reddened eyes staring at her, coughing,  _reaching_ —

Or an empty room. With the bed she sleeps on, the clothes Julian has given her, and some things that she supposes are supposed to bring her comfort but they are books she cannot read and tools she does not know how to hold—

One of the patients is screaming. The Doctor has said that the worst are not here, over and over, but this man started  _screaming_  when Julian left, and he hasn’t stopped, and now he’s banging on the door of his room…

It’s quieter outside. The man’s screams are muffled by wood and stone, and she can hear her own breathing, and try to collect her scattered thoughts. The air is colder, and the jacket she stole from Julian’s closet is heavy on her shoulders. Julian’s shoes did not fit her, and she curls her toes on the cold stones outside the clinic, and remembers walking them before. Remembers bare feet on rough ground, a blanket someone had thrown over her shoulders, and how it seemed the whole city was aflame.

There is no fire, now. Not a soul on the street at all—the very air itself oddly still, though a chill still runs up her spine.

She takes a breath, picks a direction, and starts walking.

She doesn’t know what she’s looking for. If she’s looking for anything at all, or where she’s going. But she leaves the clinic behind her, walking past buildings with shuttered windows that let out as little light and noise as possible, and she finds her steps take her downward, and the buildings around her start to become smaller, more run-down, and she has to look at the ground at her feet so she doesn’t step on lumber or broken bottles, or worse things she can’t identify.

After a while, she grows tired. Her steps falter, and she finds a quiet alley off to the side of a dark, dingy street—but there are some wooden that aren’t too dirty, and she means to only sit on them a moment, but her knees give out the moment she even thinks about rest. She collapses sideways on the crates, and pulls Julian’s heavy jacket closer to herself, shivering as she tucks her aching legs close to her body.

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep. She’s doesn’t remember closing her eyes, even—but all of a sudden there is a noise, and she jerks awake, and it’s lighter out than she remembers.

She sits up so quickly that she makes herself dizzy a moment—and she has to sit there until she feels steady again, her breath coming out in little frantic white puffs into the cold morning air and her teeth chattering so loudly that for a moment she honestly can’t hear anything else.

Then she hears the noise again—a high-pitched cry of pain, certainly inhuman, followed by shrieks of laughter.

She stands up and follows the source of the noise—and she winces as her feet scuff on frostbitten stones, and every joint in her body burns as she moves. She ignores all of it as she stumbles up the street through the early morning chill, and around a corner and into the next alley, where there are three children gathered around a barrel.

She stares at them—she’s seen children before, although not a one of them healthy. They look skinnier than they probably should, she thinks, and covered in dirt with too many holes in their clothing for how cold it is. Only one of them is wearing shoes, and the other two have simply wrapped cloth around their feet.

One of the children raises his hand, and she sees that he is holding a rock. He throws it down into the barrel, and she hears that noise again—the yowl of some animal in pain, coming from inside the barrel.

Kai yells, without thinking. Wordless and rough, and louder than she means to—but it startles the children, who barely even look at her before they scatter, disappearing into the maze of alleys faster than her eyes can follow.

It’s not the children she cares about, though—instead she rushes to the barrel, and leans over it to peer inside.

At the bottom, crowding itself as far away from her as it can get, is a small cat. So small and black it looks almost like a streak of soot, in the bottom of the barrel, aside from its angry yellow eyes, so bright against the rest of it they almost seem to glow.

It scowls up at her and hisses. As it tries to move further away, she sees that one of its legs is clearly broken, and there is a gash in its side from one of the rocks now lying at the bottom of the barrel.

She gets more scratches up her arms than she can count, and a few deep bite marks on her hands, but she gets the cat wrapped up in Julian’s spare coat. Afterwards, she stands in the alley while muffled growls of rage and pain emanate from the coat in her arms, not a soul in the streets around her, and it occurs to her that… she has no idea what to do, now.

The cat struggles, but is unable to escape the coat. She resists the urge to clutch it tighter, worried she’ll hurt it more. She takes a deep breath and steps out into the street.

Kai wanders through the streets of Vesuvia for hours—when she sees someone, she approaches them and holds out the coat. The cat inside then yowls, and the person in question usually ignores her, or flees with haste.

She tries a guard only once. He shoves her so hard he knocks her clean off her feet, and only a firm grip on the coat keeps the cat from escaping. She does not stick around long enough to listen to the things he screams at her as she flees.

It’s nearly dark again, and she is tired and thirsty and hungry when she finally hears a familiar voice. The cat has stopped yowling, though it growls weakly whenever she stumbles. Which she does as she turns a corner, and sees an open door, and an old woman arguing with someone at its step in a language Kai doesn’t speak.

She… knows this woman. Has seen her before at Julian’s clinic. She can’t remember her name, but she brings soup sometimes.

Kai takes a few cautious steps forward, and clears her throat.

The woman turns—and while the man she is arguing with looks over Kai with a bland expression, the woman’s face lights up in recognition, and then immediately alarm.

“Kai,” she says, rushing forward. “Where have you been? Ilya is worried sick!”

Kai opens her mouth as if to respond, then closes it and merely holds the coat out. The cat lets out a pitiful mewl, so soft Kai can barely hear it.

“Ah,” the old woman tuts as she grasps Kai’s shoulders. “I’m not expecting you to answer, girl. You’re cold as ice, come in, come in. Moriz!”

The man snaps to attention.

“Get Ilya! Bring him here! Quickly now!”

Kai finds herself rushed into a small home with boarded up windows. The moment she is inside, she realises how much her teeth are chattering, and how much her knees are shaking. Every bit of her skin burns, and she can’t feel her toes or the tips of her fingers. The inside of her throat feels like it’s on fire with every desperate breath of too-hot air she gulps down.

She closes her eyes, and for a moment she smells smoke, and hears the roar of waves in her ears.

She does not remember falling. But when she next opens her eyes, she’s lying on a bed, covered in blankets, and the old woman is blotting at Kai’s nose with a scratchy piece of linen.

“You fell,” she supplies, frowning. “Out cold. Made an old lady carry you.”

Kai blinks up at her, confused. And then, all in a rush, she thinks about the cat, and sits up so fast her head starts spinning again.

The old woman’s scowl cracks into a fond smile, and though she tuts admonishingly she helps Kai sit properly, and steadies her a moment before turning to the foot of the bed where, lying on Julian’s now-unravelled coat, is the cat.

It’s… bled a lot, she thinks. And it seems almost smaller than she thought, when she swaddled it up—its breathing is shallow, and it seems barely able to keep its eyes open as it tries its best to glare at the old woman.

She is not deterred—she picks it up, ignoring its weak protests, and deposits it in Kai’s arms.

“He is very weak,” the old woman says, just as the door bursts open.

“Where is she?” Doctor Devorak yells as he nearly throws himself into the room. He’s carrying his medical bag, the one he takes when he goes to places that are not the palace, and he nearly drops it when he finally locks eyes with her, his whole expression rapidly shifting from total panic to utter relief.

“Kai,” he says, rushing forward, his face growing stern. “I was—I can’t believe—I told you to—”

He stops when he reaches the bed, and she holds out the cat.

He looks down at it, brow furrowing, and then back up at her.

“Never mind the cat,” he finally says, kneeling by the bed and opening his bag. “Let me take a look at you, you’ve been out in the cold for—”

She makes a small noise of distress, low in her throat, and holds the cat out again, more urgently this time.

Julian sighs. He looks down at the cat once more—breathing still, but growing weaker by the second—before he runs a hand over his face.

“Kai,” he says, softly, “I’m—I treat  _people_. I don’t know the first thing about cats.”

She stares at him. He drops his gaze from hers, busying himself with his bag.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She takes a breath—and that’s when she realises she’s crying. She’s not sure why. She—can’t explain it. But it seems—it seems like such a waste, to have come all this way. To have Julian brought back to her, right when she needs him most, and… and for him to do nothing?

She thinks of the people in the clinic, walking away sobbing with relief. With pouches of herbs and promises that their loved ones will live a little longer—and of how empty Julian looks, when the door is closed and he thinks she is no longer watching. How utterly exhausted he is when he slumps in a chair, and buries his face in his hands.

“Please.”

Julian starts. He looks up at her, wide-eyed with alarm. She takes a sharp breath—because  _she_  said that, didn’t she? It came out croaky and rough, and strange to her ears, but…

“Please,” she says again, and it sounds a little better this time. “Julian.  _Please.”_

He stares at her. Just… stares, for so long that she wants to strangle him. But eventually he looks down at the cat in her arms, and he sighs—and finally, he reaches forward, and takes one of his gloves off before pressing his hand to the gash in the cat’s side.

She watches, wide-eyed, as a strange symbol on his neck begins to glow. And then she watches as the cat’s wound glows with the same white light, and then slowly begins to knit itself back together.

The cat jerks in place, and as she lowers it to rest in her lap it sits up and immediately begins cleaning its fur where Julian touched it.

And then Julian collapses.

She cries out and tries to stand—but Julian waves her off between wheezing coughs, and the old woman makes no move to help him either. She actually just looks unimpressed as he rolls around on the floor, gasping for breath, blood seeping through his white shirt between his fingers—

And then his breathing evens out. The blood flow eases, and he groans as he sits up, and then allows the old woman to help him get to his feet.

“Another shirt ruined,” he croaks, before the old woman helps him into a chair.

“So dramatic,” she scolds, before turning on her heel and heading over to the fire, and the pot of soup simmering over it.

Julian flashes his familiar overconfident smile at Kai. “See? Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.”

She just stares at him.

He smirks. “Cat got your tongue?” he teases, before looking down at the actual cat and scooting his chair a little closer. “Where did you even  _find_  such a tiny little thing—”

He reaches out to pet the cat—and mid-groom, it arches its back and hisses at him, the only warning he gets before half a heartbeat later it takes a swipe at Julian’s outstretched hand.

Julian recoils, and Kai watches as a long, angry red scratch on his hand slowly disappears, leaving no evidence it was ever there. “Charming,” he drawls.

The cat growls at him.

Kai’s hand falls to rest on the cat’s back, and under her touch she feels it immediately calm. Its tense muscles relax, and it turns in her lap to headbutt her hand, and then to stretch its neck so she can scratch him under its chin. It starts to purr, loudly, while kneading the blankets still covering her lap.

“Ungrateful little—you’re welcome!”

The old woman laughs deep in her belly as she drops a bowl of soup into Julian’s hands. He hardly seems to notice, looking so utterly offended that Kai starts to laugh in turn, though she does try to cover it up with her other hand.

“Eat up,” the woman tells her, and Kai stops scratching the cat long enough to take the bowl. It mewls pitifully at the absence—before she lowers the bowl enough for it to drink out of.

“I wouldn’t let it do that,” Julian gripes, a spoon of soup halfway to his lips. “It’s probably diseased.”

The cat flicks its tail and its ears twitch in annoyance. Kai only smiles, and smooths the dirty fur over its back as it drinks its fill.


	2. The Emperor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You may feel powerless when the Emperor reversed appears in a reading. Dealing with authority is fraught with difficulties at this time and… you do not seem to be making any headway. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/emperor/)]

The count’s laughter follows Kai as she races through the palace gardens, ringing in her ears and hounding her steps closer than the snarling jaws of his dogs ever could.

_Prove to me that you can find my beloved wife’s murderer. Find the guard with the good doctor’s sketch, and return him to me. And I’m sure Dr. Devorak has told you, but I do not tolerate failure._

_Might want to hurry, little assistant. I’ve already given your quarry quite the head start._

She stumbles, finally, and has to catch herself on a tree. The few bites of the outrageously extravagant breakfast she’d eaten for politeness’ sake turn in her stomach as her heart races, and she attempts the monumental task of catching her breath while also trying not to vomit.

She does not  _quitre_ succeed—her heart races with far too much terror at the thought of what the count will inevitably do to her if she fails.

Seeing as the only sounds surrounding her are the calls of pale birds, and the rush of leaves in the wind, she doesn’t think she is  _meant_  to succeed.

When it seems like her heart simply will not calm, she pushes herself from the tree and takes a look at her surroundings. To her left, a path leads into a hedge maze—a good, if somewhat predictable place to hide. To her right, she can see a wooden wall in the distance, and an open gate with a path leading down a hill, away from the palace and towards the city.

There are no footprints in the grass, no broken branches or disturbed trees. No clue as to where the guard might have gone.

_If he even exists_ , she thinks, remembering Dr. Devorak’s horrified expression as the count relayed his instructions to her.

In the distance, she hears the barking and snarling of dogs.

She takes off for the gate, leaving the overgrown hedge maze behind her.

 

Kai has always found the streets of Vesuvia to be cold and unwelcoming, but as the sun begins to set and she leaves the palace further and further behind, she’s almost relieved for their too-dark shadows and the huddled figures who hurry along the uneven stones.

She only has a few hours before the curfew now. She  _knows_  she cannot go back to the clinic to get Cinis, that is the first place they will look for her. (If they’re not already—and isn’t  _that_  a sobering thought.)

This is a side of town she’s never been to before—she’s been on a few calls with the Doctor in recent months, as her own condition improved, but there’s only so much of the city he feels comfortable bringing her to. Judging by the size of the rat that scampers across her path, this is… definitely not one of them.

The Doctor… Her gait slows just thinking about him. How worried he must be right now—he can be so protective of her. What must he be thinking right now? She can’t imagine the count involved her in this whole mess because he actually believes she can find that magician. She knows there’s no love lost between Dr. Devorak and Count Lucio—was she brought to the palace to punish the doctor? And for what reason?

Not to mention the magician Asra showing up at the clinic scant minutes after the Count, demanding to see the doctor… what could his game possibly be? The man must be insane, coming back to a city where the ruler wants him dead.

Well. Possibly as insane as sending someone on a wild goose chase after a single guard. How is she supposed to find him? Ask around? Hello, anyone seen a guard wearing a rabbit or a deer costume? Also was he carrying an anatomical sketch of a cross-section of a human brain? Oh, you don’t know what that is? It’s basically a bunch of squiggly lines…

“Great,” she mutters out loud, “now I’m starting to even  _think_  like him.”

“Like who?” says someone walking a step beside her, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

Kai stumbles sideways, losing her footing on an uneven stone, and finds herself falling ass-first into a rain barrel. A thankfully  _empty_  rain barrel, she muses as she stares up at the cloudy evening sky, so at least she’s got  _that_  going for her.

She hears soft, warm laughter, and as she flails a little as she tries to get herself out, the person in question says again, in between chuckles, “Hold on, let me help you out of there.”

It’s… a familiar voice. One she’s heard recently, she realises with a growing dread, as Asra the magician peers over the hole in the barrel, his purple eyes gleaming with amusement, and his disguise falling from his face as he stoops over her.

Of. Fucking. Course.

“Have you always been this clumsy?” he asks as he reaches in. His sleeve catches on the barrel and rolls up his arm, exposing shining bangles on rich, golden skin.

She hesitates a moment—weighing trusting an awful murderer and being stuck in a barrel next to an awful murderer—but her options here are excessively limited so she takes his hand, and braces herself on the barrel as he pulls her up.

She braces a hand on the first solid surface available to her as he gets her back on solid ground—which is, horrifyingly, his chest. Her fingertip slides past layers of the softest fabrics she’s ever felt in her life, and touches the warm, smooth skin underneath.

For his part, he only smiles down at her, as if they aren’t standing too close together for comfort. Still holding her hand, and looking for all the world as if he is trying to memorize something in her eyes.

_Magician,_  she remembers, and as her cheeks start to burn she yanks her hand away, and takes a few cautious steps back.

“I— _thank you_ ,” she manages to stammer as she makes a poor attempt at straightening out her clothing.

He simply stands there and watches her with an expression that is more  _amused_  than anything else. He just keeps looking at her, all fond and warm, which just makes her feel  _baffled_ , honestly.

“My name is Kai,” she ventures, when his staring gets uncomfortable.

He blinks, as if that answer is somehow surprising.

_Kai?_

It’s her turn to blink—she looks over her shoulder, frowning, but there’s no one behind her in the cramped, dark alley. She’s about to write it off as hearing things, but then it happens again—a bright, friendly voice saying her name, that she doesn’t quite  _hear_  so much as… feel.

When she looks at Asra again, his heavy dark scarf rustles, and his snake pops its head out of his clothing—it flicks its tongue at her repeatedly before turning its head upside down, blinking at her with wide, confused red eyes.

_Kai?_  it asks a third time, before Asra starts in place, looking over his shoulder before trying to stuff the snake back in his clothing.  _Why Kai?_

“Oh,” Kai says, a little too loudly, “your snake can  _talk?_ ”

“Of course she can,” he replies, his voice low. “To people who can hear her.”

He pauses to murmur apologetically to the snake—she catches him saying, “I know, I think it’s itchy too,” as he runs two fingers over the snake’s head, which finally seems to mollify her into hiding once again.

Asra adjusts his clothing, securing his scarf around his face once again. His eyes crinkle as he meets her gaze once more.

“We should get moving,” he says, his voice purposefully low. “The curfew will be starting soon, and we don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves.”

He slips his arms in hers, and leads her out of the alley with brisk, even steps. She follows—not like she has much of a choice—while she mulls over his words, and tries to ignore the feeling of his snake slinking down his sleeve, and running along her arm under his clothing.

“What do you mean, people who can hear her?”

He picks a burr off her shoulder. “Hm?”

She glances around uneasily—there are a few people walking the streets, but no one is close enough to listen in. So she whispers, “Your snake. She… only talks to certain people?”

He gives her a serious look—probably the first she’s seen from him. His eyes narrow, and he seems to be studying her eyes intently. It’s… different than his earlier attentions, and it almost makes her want to pull away.

_Faust!_

She jerks in place a little at the sudden not-sound ringing in her mind.

Asra’s eyes crinkle, and that strange scrutiny vanishes from his eyes. “Her name,” he clarifies, and he speaks so low that it’s hard to make out but he sounds… impossibly sad. Then he inclines his head, and suddenly they are cutting across the street, into a narrower side lane.

His hand on hers is warm, and her steps follow his without question.

“Faust is my familiar,” he explains. “She can speak to me, and those she shares a strong bond with.”

“I have met you and your snake  _once_.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Anyone with strong enough magic can understand another familiar, you know.”

Her stomach twists. She stops in her tracks, and immediately yanks her hand from his. He turns and studies her, his expression patient and smooth save for the amused gleam in his eyes.

She can’t help but look around them, wildly—but they are alone here, no one around to overhear their conversation.

“I don’t  _have_  magic,” she hisses, “and even if I did—it’s illegal! They hang people for… for tarot card readings!”

Asra laughs—low and dark, with a bitter edge that gives her pause. “Whatever Lucio says, whatever he— _decrees_  from on high… Magic is the essence of  _life_ , Kai. It’s in me, it’s in Faust, it’s in Ilya whether he likes it or not… And in you?” He draws himself closer, and something in his eyes lights up as he regards her. His voice softens as he says, “Kai, there’s magic in you, so much that you that you shine so bright, even the misery of this city can’t disguise you.”

He’s… very close. So close that she finds herself lost in his eyes, for a moment. In the energy of him, in the slow curve of his smile as he regards her.

They are… certainly very pretty eyes. For a murderer.

She hears footsteps approaching—someone running, she thinks. And she starts, but Asra only sighs and takes her arm in his once again.

“This is where we part ways for now,” he says.

“What?”

He winks at her, and then adjusts his scarf to cover his face once more. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Trust your instincts, they won’t lead you astray.”

“I don’t—”

They step forward together—passing from side lane to street—and he holds her arm and leads her in one heartbeat, and has vanished into thin air in the next.

She’s so busy gaping at the magician-less space next to her, that whoever is running down the street plows right into her.

They tumble over one another, hitting the stones hard before Kai immediately shoves the man off her. She almost curses at him, and goes to look for the magician once again—until she sees a guard uniform, and a rabbit mask askew on his face.

She stares at him. He gapes up at her.

That continues for a while, before he reaches into his pocket, and produces a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket.

_Julian’s sketch_.

She snatches it from him. She tries to smooth it out, and scowls at the mess his sweaty palms have made of the charcoal lines. “This was  _important_ ,” she hisses.

He does manage to look a little guilty, even though they both know it’s not his fault.

Behind the guard, Kai hears the clatter of hooves on pavement. She looks up, and coming around the corner is the count himself, barrelling down the street on a white horse and a full guard contingent riding hard behind him. Kai and the guard both scramble out of the way, only for the count to draw his horse up beside them. The beast whinnies, chomps at his bit, and snorts, shifting in place restlessly as the count looks down at them.

The horse looks at Kai—and she doesn’t know much about horses, but she can see something wild and frantic in its red eyes, and sweat streaking its flank. The poor thing is exhausted. Every horse is—they are all breathing heavily, run too hard for too long with burdens on their backs.

Have they been running their horses so hard since the palace?

Kai glares up at the count, and he stares back at her unflinching.

She thinks of Julian, and grits her teeth.

The rabbit guard seems to remember to bow, after a long moment. And that movement catches Lucio’s plague-reddened eyes, and without even skipping a beat he reaches into his belt, pulls out a gun, and shoots the guard dead between the eyes.

It is easily the loudest sound Kai has ever heard in her life. She must scream, or react, or  _something_ —but all she is aware of is her own sudden intake of breath, an impossibly loud noise, and a ringing in her ears.

When she looks over, the guard is still standing next to her—with a hole in his forehead, and powder burns all over his mask.

Lucio holsters the gun, and the guard falls sideways to the ground.

“Let that be an example for those who might fail me,” Lucio barks back to his guards without once looking over his shoulder. His gaze doesn’t flinch from Kai even once.

She stares back, stunned.

She loses track of how long they stay like that—Lucio on his miserable horse, glowering down at her from on high, and herself just standing there and honestly trying not to throw up. Her heart hammers in her chest, her stomach turns, and she wonders if she’ll have time to make it through the narrow side streets before Lucio reloads his pistol—

“Guards,” the count says with a grin that nearly splits his face in two, “arrest this woman for the use of witchcraft in my city.”

She gapes up at him. He turns his horse and urges it back up the hill—at a full gallop, the poor thing—and the guards close in around her. Their horses all exhausted, breathing hot heavy breaths into her face.

She doesn’t even react—doesn’t fight it as one of them reaches down and grabs her by her collar, yanking her up onto the horse behind him. The guards don’t spare a glance for her or anything else—they turn their horses and begin the ride up the road to the palace looming on the horizon.

Kai, however,  _does_  look back—and she stares for as long as she can at the dead body of the guard, simply left where he fell in the street, before the road curves, and she loses sight of him around the bend.


	3. Nine of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is no wonder that many Tarot readers refer to this card as the Wish Card as its appearance is often taken as a sign that, whatever your heart’s desire, it shall be granted in the coming days or weeks… When reversed, it suggests that you may be disappointed that your wishes are not materialising as expected. Your expectations may be unrealistic or you may not be actively pursuing your dreams, instead hoping that they will manifest with little input or action from you. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-cups/nine-of-cups/)]

After Doctor Devorak heals the stray cat, he and Mazelinka sit down at the table and speak in low voices when they think Kai is asleep, the cat curled up under the blankets at the small of her back.

“She needs to leave this city,” Mazelinka says, while Kai’s hands made fists in her blankets.

Julian scoffs. “Don’t we all.”

Mazelinka sighs, with the weight of someone dealing with a particularly dense child. “It is _unnaturally_ cold, Ilya, and she was out there in no shoes, a terrible coat—”

“When am I supposed to go buy her things?” Julian hisses. “Half the markets were torched in the riots, and those that weren’t have been shut down while the guards investigate for _magical ingredients_. I’m summoned to the palace nearly every day, I have people trying to break down my door for treatment—”

Whatever he’s about to say is cut off by a yelp.

“Fool boy,” Mazelinka scolds him. “Yes, you need to take better care of her, but that is not what we are talking about right now.”

“That _hurt_ ,” Julian complains under his breath.

"There was no snow. But it was cold _enough_ last night.”

Julian exhales, slowly. She can hear the creak of his chair as if he’s leaning back in it.

“I… there was frost this morning. She should have—no frostbite, nothing?” He pauses, as if waiting for a response, and then Kai hears his chair scrape on the floor, and his boots on the floorboards as he begins to pace. “She could have found shelter.”

“Ilya.”

“Someone must have taken her in.”

“Ilya _._ ”

“I’ll ask around—”

“ _Ilya_ ”

He stops pacing. He starts taking deep, heavy breaths, as if trying to calm himself.

“She has a great magic in her,” Mazelinka says.

Julian starts pacing again. “Today Lucio executed a fortune teller. A _fortune teller_ , Mazelinka! They read tarot cards—badly! And he laughed the whole damn time!”

“Which is why she must leave—”

Julian stops, and then rushes back to the table. “And go _where_? She has no memories, and even if she did she can barely speak, let alone—let alone work a trade or earn money or—I haven’t even bought her _shoes_ , Mazelinka. Shoes!”

He lets out a sigh, and then collapses into the chair once more.

“I can’t send her away,” he says at length. “I—I _can’t_.”

After a moment of silence, Mazelinka hums thoughtfully. “When did you suddenly become so responsible?” she wonders, sounding almost proud.

Julian lets out a low, harsh laugh. “When this city went to shit, and everyone decided I’m supposed to save it.”

-

The guards do not put her in the dungeon when they arrive at the palace. Instead, a servant stands at the gates, wringing his hands and doing his best not to look terrified.

“There’s been a room prepared for her in the guest wing,” the servant says the moment the guard and Kai dismount.

It’s strange, but he says it like the room prepared itself, without anyone actually having done so.

The guard holding her arm looks about to argue, for a moment, but then one of the others elbows him, _hard_ , and they stand a little taller before addressing the servant. “Of course,” the guard says, and they lead her through the gates.

They escort her through the palace in a hurry, so fast that she honestly has a hard time keeping up. They breeze through the elegant, empty hallways, past rooms filled with opulent red and gold furnishings. The air reeks of fine wine and food rich with herbs and spices, and her stomach growls but she follows her escort diligently.

They lead her up a number of staircases—which are rather run down and bare, so she assumes they are for the palace staff to use—and out into a hallway with stiff red carpet and portraits of the count lining the walls.

At the end of the hall, a different servant waits in front of a large door, standing very straight in spite of her obvious age, and staring somewhere past them all without really seeming to acknowledge them as they approach.  

As they draw closer, Kai sees that her pupils are pale, her eyes blinded by cataracts.

“My lady hopes you are pleased with your accommodations, honoured magician,” the old woman says, before pulling an elegant brass key from her ring and turning to open the door.

 _My lady_? Kai wonders. But, there is no lady of this palace, not since…

The guard shoves her inside the moment the door is open, and then reaches in and slams it closed behind her. Through the door, she can hear them say, “You can’t go around saying that shit, what if the count overhears you?”

“Well,” the old servant replies, tersely, “since he’s hardly creative in his punishments, I won’t have to wonder very long.”

They must step away from her door and continue to argue, as she can hear the sounds of their voices but not make out the words. She runs a hand through her hair and sighs, heavily, before looking around at the room before her.

It is large, easily as large as the part of Julian’s clinic set aside for living in. There is a bed she’s sure could sleep four people, crammed in, with a massive canopy and the softest looking cushions she’s ever seen in her life. It takes her a moment to realise that nothing in the room is red—everything is in shades of blue, purple, or vibrant whites, interspersed with dark stained wood floors and trim, with silver finishings instead of gold.

On an oak table off to the side rests a single place setting, covered with an elegant but tasteful silver lid. There is a white wine on ice beside it, and a small loaf of bread next to a little silver dish that holds a generous amount of softened butter. Kai approaches, frowning, and seeing no obvious trap she lifts the lid.

Steam wafts off a delicate filet of fish—Kai sees and smells spices on it that she does not know the name of, but she _thinks_ they are Prakran in origin. It rests on a bed of stewed vegetables, with yogurt on the side.

To her credit, she considers that this might be poisoned for half a heartbeat. But then her stomach gurgles again, and she sits down in the chair and tucks into the meal without a second thought.

She’s scraping the last traces of sauce off the plate when she hears a commotion in the hallway—and before she can even register _that_ , Julian bursts into the room, ignoring the protests of the two guards apparently stationed outside, and then slams the door behind him as fast as he can.

“Doctor!” she says, standing so quickly that her chair topples over.

He doesn’t answer her—he hardly hesitates a moment before opening his jacket, and a small black streak of anger tears out of his coat, rakes a single angry trail over Julian’s face with his claws, and then launches himself at Kai.

“Cinis!” she exclaims, kneeling to sweep the small cat off the floor and into her arms. He purrs as loud as he can, burrowing his face under her chin as she pets him and makes soft, soothing nonsense noises.

“Yes, yes,” Julian says, buttoning up his coat. Kai looks up at him, and the angry red scratch all down his face is already beginning to vanish. “You’re welcome, you ungrateful little match stick.”

“Thank you,” Kai says to Julian, and then looks down at her cat again. “Are you hungry? Poor thing, must have been so lonely.”

“ _Poor thing_ ,” Julian parrots. “He didn’t just run the length of the city with an angry ball of death shoved down his jacket.” He smooths out his jacket, runs a hand through his hair, and then says, “Alright, Kai, don’t panic, I’m going to get you out of this mess.”

“What?” Kai blurts. Meanwhile, Cinis tries to burrow deeper into her neck. He starts kneading her collarbone with his sharp claws, and she winces but does not deter him.

“I’m going to—I’m going to send you to Mazelinka, alright?” He goes to the window and opens it, leans outside so dramatically that she thinks he’s going to plummet right out before he swings back in onto his heels and slams it shut again. “Sheer drop. No good. Wait, how many sheets are on that bed—”

“Doctor—”

“And—and I haven’t had time to talk to her about this, no I decided to smuggle a demon cat into the palace instead—and you’re going to tell her what happened, and that you need to get as far away as possible from this cesspit of a city—”

“Doctor!”

He starts throwing pillows off the bed, and Kai has to actually duck one almost hits her square in the head. She starts skirting around the room to avoid the soft missiles in question, until she stands by the window.

“You have a trade now, sort of, you’ve been assisting me for a year or so, now, and you’re an excellent study, I’ll write you a glowing letter of recommendation, it’ll be ten—no—fifteen pages long, no one can turn you down with that sort of reference.”

She opens the window and peers down, curiously—and sees nothing but a long, long drop, directly into a courtyard.

Cinis turns to look as well—and makes a small chirping noise of protest.

Kai looks up again—but the only view her window offers is that of one of the palace’s towers, reaching up into the sky.

When she turns back to Julian, he’s yanked back the blanket and started pulling at the sheets. “Yes, count on Lucio to stick you in a tower like some kind of—dragon or evil wizard or, something, this metaphor is getting away from me but—yes, this is plenty, two sheets is plenty to scale a palace wall, right Kai?”

Before she can even answer him, he curses. “No, that’s stupid. Here,” and he starts charging over to the wall, “there’s all sorts of secret passages in this miserable place, maybe if I just pull on the right—”

“Doctor!”

He yanks so hard on a candelabra it comes right off the wall. “—fixture—”

“ _Julian_!”

He nearly trips over some of the pillows he threw as the candle holder comes clean off the wall, nails and all. He does, however, snap his mouth shut, and turn around so Kai can see him properly. He’s blushing furiously, as he always does when he gets carried away like this.

“Ah,” he says, softly. “Sorry.”

Kai deposits Cinis on the table so he can lick her plate, then grabs the bottle of wine from the ice and, finding it uncorked, takes a swig. It’s slightly sweet, with a taste almost like lemons to it that she supposes is meant to compliment the fish, but honestly it’s wine, and so after she’s had her drink she hands the bottle to Julian.

He takes it, thanks her softly, and then takes a long, long swig. Then he passes it back, looking contemplative, and Kai takes another swig herself.

“If he wanted me dead,” Kai says finally, “He’d have shot me in the street with that guard.”

Julian makes a strangled noise low in his throat. “He shot a…” he trails off, then says, softly, “Kai—I wish you hadn’t seen that—”

“I’ve seen plenty of people die,” she snaps. Worse deaths, too, than being shot in the head.

But… the other guards just _leaving_ him there…

He sighs. He drops a heavy hand onto her shoulder and says, “I know.”

She closes her eyes, and—and in spite of her words, she leans into his touch a little.

He squeezes her shoulder reassuringly, and after a moment lets her go.

“Okay,” he says, now obviously trying to remain calm. “So—I imagine you won’t be able to escape from this room. But—if you get your chance, even if you have to—I don’t know, stab someone—promise me you’ll take it. Alright?”

Not that her chance worked out well for her the last time. But she nods anyway, and Julian finally smiles a little at her in response.

“Now,” he says, going through his pockets. “If— _when_ you get your chance, the best place to lose Lucio is the city, during the day. Take any tight side street you can—he’ll come in on that ridiculous warhorse of his and he’ll have a hard time going through crowds. And when you think it’s safe, you’re going to—here it is—follow this map.”

He hands her a folded piece of paper. She takes it curiously, and unfolds it.

“Julian,” she says, “this is blank.”

“Yes, yes, you’re very smart. I just have to remember the—what the hell was it—and he used to accuse _me_ of dramatics— _aragma._ ”

In her hands, deep purple lines appear on the yellowed piece of paper, as if seeping out from within.

Kai nearly drops the thing in horror. “Julian!” she hisses, clutching it to her chest. “This is—”

“I _know_ ,” he hisses—but he grabs her hand and makes her look at the now fully-formed map. It shows a part of the city close to one of the now-closed city markets—a part of the city badly burned by the riots after the Countess’s death.

She stares at it until the map begins to fade, and the paper slowly becomes blank once more. She… she can’t believe Julian had this. His mark is one thing, but…

“If you were caught with this,” she starts to say, but he’s rifling through his pockets again.

“If Lucio hangs me—and we both know how well _that_ would go—the rest of his precious city will be lost to riots,” he replies. “Or the plague, it could go either way at this point. Once you get to that house—”

“Half of that district burned to the ground, Julian.”

“Only half. Once you get there, it will be heavily guarded—believe me, I’ve checked—but you can jump the back wall when no one’s looking and get into the garden. But only if you have— _this key_.”

He produces a small, unassuming brass key, and presses it into her hand.

It’s warm. Warmer than it should be, even from being in a pocket—and as she closes her hand around it, it almost feels like it’s… vibrating, a little.

“Use this to get in the house, and then stay there. No one will be able to follow you in, no one can burn it down—nothing.”

She tucks the key and the map into her pocket. “And how long exactly am I supposed to stay in there?”

Julian stares at her, and then keeps staring at her.

“I… haven’t figured that part out yet.”

She runs a hand through her hair. “Of course not.”

“Kai,” he says, this time reaching out and putting both hands on her shoulders. “We’ll… we’ll figure it out, alright? Mazelinka and Portia and I, and even that ridiculous bird, we’re all going to help you. Okay?”

He looks so earnest, so _desperate_ , that she manages a little lopsided smile for him.

He lets out a breath, and then messes up her hair a little. “That’s the spirit,” he says, almost sounding like he believes it.

-

Kai does not sleep particularly well that night—but when she does, her dreams are filled with the sound of flowing water, the brightness of sunlight coming through tall, tall windows, and the smell of jasmine wafting in the air. She dreams of a tall woman with long hair, who speaks urgently to her—but though she knows the woman is beside her, her voice is too far away to make out the words.

She wakes to another grey Vesuvia morning, with a deep and foreboding sense of dread.

Then she is summoned by the count, and he tells her in front of the entire court what he wants her to do.

“It is time the magician Asra faced justice for his crimes,” Lucio drawls, as if reading from a script he thinks too long, but has somehow been convinced is necessary. “Normal methods of investigation have proven inadequate—so it shall be that we use his own magics against him. In lieu of the regular sentence for witchcraft, this crown charges you with finding him and bringing him to us before the Masquerade begins.”

She catches a glimpse of Julian, standing ramrod straight off to the side of the dais the throne sits upon. His expression hard as a rock, though she does catch it waver a moment.

He looks, for half a heartbeat, utterly at a loss.

She is immediately shuffled away after the sentencing, flanked by guards on either side who bring her through the palace at an exhausting pace. A scribe of some sort walks briskly in front of them, undaunted by the speed of their travel.

“The magician Asra kept nothing here at the palace,” the scribe recites off a scroll he holds before him. He must have it memorized, as its fluttering in the breeze does not seem to give him pause. “Aside from some few belongings, that is. But those have been confiscated and burned already, so they would not taint the palace with their evil magics.”

Kai struggles to keep up—her bag is unusually heavy, as small as the cat crammed into it is. He’s being blessedly still, though she wonders if anyone else can feel the rage radiating from him at being so confined, or if it’s just her.

“We discovered shortly after the murder of the Countess a dwelling associated with him in the city, which has through some dark power escaped damage in the riots. That same dark power has prevented us from entering and tearing the place apart for clues—perhaps a witch will have more luck than we did.”

He rolls the scroll up just as the guards stop, and Kai takes the welcome reprieve to catch her breath. They are standing just outside the gates, where a carriage waits. It is large, black, and there are bars on the windows—she has seen them before on the streets, transporting prisoners to the Coliseum. A pair of skinny brown horses have been hitched to it, and they paw at the ground restlessly while the footman holds their reigns too tight.

“Well,” the scribe says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Good luck, I suppose.”

He doesn’t particularly sound like he means it.

The carriage interior was certainly not made for comfort. She bounces around on the hard wooden bench the whole ride—though she is grateful for all the noise it makes rattling on the cobblestones, because it hides Cinis’s complaining that starts the moment he gets out of the bag.

It’s… a long ride. Cinis finds a dead mouse under the seat to amuse himself with, and Kai steadies herself by lying across the bench and bracing herself with her feet and one hand, while she pulls the scrap of paper out of her pocket with the other.

“ _Aragma_ ,” she whispers, and watches as the lines bloom on the blank paper. She’s pretty sure she memorized it last night, but a little review never hurts…

By the time the carriage begins to slow, Kai’s been staring at the damn paper so long she feels like her eyes are crossed. Cinis has given up on the mouse and is taking a nap on her stomach. She manages to convince him to get back into the bag before they stop, and a guard swings the door open and yanks her out by the arm.

She stumbles on a wide street. On either side there are charred remains of buildings, with some small effort made to clear the road but nothing done for the piles of burnt lumber and debris. The spaces between the cobblestones are caked with mud and flakes of ash, as if the rain still hasn’t washed all the memory of the riots way from this place.

In the middle of it all stands a single shop, totally absent of any sign of the riots in the streets surrounding it. It has an unassuming front, a single sign hanging over its door with a snake wound around a mortar and pestle. There is a stone wall looping around the back, and she can see the branches of a tree rising from the garden it encloses. Full of healthy green leaves, branches heavy with fruit.

There are guards standing a respectable distance away from the shop—in the middle of the street, next to some overturned crates and scattered playing cards, as if they dropped them to stand and salute the guard dragging Kai around by the elbow.

As she gets a better look at the streets, at the way they curve, at the layout of the intersections…

She bites the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t say it out loud: _Of. Fucking. Course._

“At ease,” he tells them, pulling Kai closer to the shop. The one she has a key for in her _fucking pocket_. “This won’t take long.”

“Five silver says she bounces all the way across the street,” the carriage driver quips.

“Ain’t seen that in _years_. Nah, she’ll just get knocked flat on her ass, we’re outta here in five minutes, tops.”

“Enough,” says the guard holding her. “Alright, girl, go ahead and try the door so we can all go home.”

He shoves her toward the shop. She stumbles until she catches her footing, and resists the urge to glare over her shoulder at him. She can feel the key buzzing in her pocket now—and it’s strange, but it feels _excited_.

And her heart races, like it’s infectious.

She hesitates—but she can feel Cinis stirring in her bag, impatiently, so she takes a deep breath and walks toward the shop.

She knows the moment she reaches through the barrier because she can _feel_ it—it rushes over her, like a sheer curtain parting at the slightest touch. It feels like a cool breeze on a hot day, tousling her hair playfully as it goes, and it leaves her heart… warmer, for having passed through it.

She reaches up to shove her bangs out of her face, biting her lip to disguise the smile she can’t contain even if she can’t explain where it comes from.

Behind her, someone says very softly, “Holy shit.”

She reaches the door and presses her palm flat to it—the key is so warm she can feel it through her clothes, but she’s not entirely certain she wants these people to see her open the door with it. They will report back to Lucio, after all, and if he finds out that Julian helped her…

Instead, she keeps her hand on the wall, and starts to walk the perimeter of the shop.

It feels a little dumb. But maybe it looks impressive, because she can hear the guards speaking in hushed voices behind her. But she pretends to focus as she goes, walking at a deliberately slow pace, as if she’s searching for something.

Cinis, excited by the atmosphere, jumps out of her bag. He starts ahead, running around the corner, and just after she loses sight of him he starts to chitter, excited like he’s seen a bird. She walks a little faster until she catches up to him—just in time to see him wiggle a little, and then make the impressive leap to the top of the stone wall. He scrambles a little bit at the top, before turning around and sitting, letting his tail hang over the side as he grooms his ears.

He looks so pleased with himself that she can’t help her grin now.

There are a few gaps in the stonework, here—just big enough for hand and footholds, and she suspects from the look of them that this wouldn’t be the first time someone’s climbed over this garden wall. She wonders for a moment who, and when, and _why_ —amuses herself with the thought of young lovers before remembering the reason she’s actually here. She shakes her inexplicable daydream away and reaches up to start climbing.

“H-hey!” one of the guards shouts. “You can’t—hey!”

She swings her legs over the wall and drops to the other side.

She lands on her hands and knees, and soft grass cushions her fall. She curls her fingers in it, marveling at its impossible softness, before standing and taking a look at her surroundings.

She stands in a quiet, secluded, and more than a little overgrown garden. There are plants growing here she’s never seen before, twining around each other, growing over or under one another in a kind of… chaotic harmony she doesn’t understand. As if some magic is keeping them from choking one another out, but they are still growing unchecked, regardless.

Peering out from under the plants are small stone figures, covered in varying amounts of moss. They watch her with friendly, if a bit sombre, expressions, their eyes following her as she moves throughout the garden.

There is a pump for water by the house, shaped to look like a great sea serpent holding an overturned urn. Kai pumps it several times—and to her astonishment, clear water pours out onto the soft stones below. She manages to catch some in her hands, and greedily drinks her fill.

It tastes _clean_. She gets the whole front of her shirt soaked and doesn’t even care.

In the center of the garden is a round pool lined with stones. Its surface is strangely still, so reflective she nearly mistakes it for a mirror when she leans over it, but for the little ripples made as Cinis drinks from its edge.

Her reflection stares back at her—wide-eyed and a little awestruck.

There are bushes nearly as tall as she is, with an abundance of berries that she doesn’t know the names of but all of them are plump, juicy, and just _looking_ at them makes her mouth water. There is a small, twisting tree, its branches drooping with heavy red fruit. One has fallen to the ground and split open, and she realises upon looking at its seeds that it’s a pomegranate. The tree she’d seen from the street towers above it, though some of its fruit-bearing branches are low enough she can reach. The fruit is small enough to fit in her palm, and the ones that have fallen to the ground reveal soft, deep red flesh.

There’s enough food in this garden to feed… oh, she can’t tell how many families. All of it just sitting here, waiting to be eaten.

After a moment’s hesitation, she gives into temptation, and fills her scarf with berries, some of the strange red fruit, and pulls a single pomegranate off a drooping branch. It’s surprisingly heavy for its size.

Because… really. No one else is eating it.

She ties her scarf with a knot so she won’t lose her stolen food, and tries to get into the pomegranate with her nails a few times, but the skin proves too tough. She sticks it in her bag, and while Cinis searches under the overgrown herbs for mice to chase, she finally approaches the shop itself.

The back door is, unsurprisingly, locked. With a glance up at the walls—and she realises, now, that she can’t hear a single sound coming from the street—she fishes the key out of her pocket and uses it to unlock the door.

Inside the shop it is still and quiet. The windows are all covered with thick curtains, casting the interior in strange dark shadows. She’s entered what appears to be the back room, for storage she assumes. There are wooden boxes on shelves against the wall, and she opens one to find jars inside, cushioned with straw, each one filled with something different and labelled in fine, looping cursive.

“Dried marigold,” she reads aloud, while Cinis pokes his nose into the box to smell it. “Salt from an inland sea. Lichen from an ancient, towering tree. Water from under a new bridge.”

There doesn’t seem to be any organizational method at all. Not one that she can understand, anyway.  She replaces the lid on the box and tucks it back on the shelf, while Cinis wanders into the next room, his tail held high in the air.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” she warns him, and he _mrrs_ cheerfully in reply.

She’s just opened up the next box when she hears Cinis chirp, like he’s seen a bird through a window, and she thinks, _oh no_ , and slams the lid closed before darting after him.

The next room is small, windowless, with soft curtains hanging in the doorway that shimmer when she moves them. There’s only a table in the middle of the room, low enough that there are cushions instead of chairs for sitting on. On the table is a deck of cards sitting next to a pouch presumably meant to hold them, a brightly coloured bag, and her ridiculous cat, who has noticed one of the cards sitting aside from the deck and bats at it with his paws.

“Cinis!” she scolds, rushing forward.

He chitters back at her, all bravado, and knocks the card off the table before she gets there. She shoos him off, enduring his annoyed chirps, and bends to pick up the card, turning it over in her hands.

It’s a tarot card.

She nearly drops it in surprise. And then it occurs to her that—well, she’s already _been_ arrested for witchcraft, how much worse is _holding a tarot card_ going to do her in, really. So she holds it, and examines the back, and turns it over once again. In the center is a fish with broad, elegant fins, surrounded by cups.

“Nine of cups,” she says, softly, running her thumb over the number at the bottom of the card.

It grows pleasantly warm in her hand.

She… gets the feeling that it’s saying _hello_.

 _There’s magic in you,_ Asra had said.

Her breath catches in her throat. She puts the card down on top of the others, face-down.

She checks the bag—it’s strangely, irrationally dark when she tries to peer in it, but when she reaches in her hand closes around a leather-bound book, bigger to her touch than the shape of the bag lying against the table would indicate. She pulls it out—and the bag settles exactly as it had before, as if she had removed nothing at all—and examines it closely. It is old, the leather cracking around the spine, and the same symbol that sits outside the shop adorns its cover, well-worn by time and the touch of many hands.

She opens it slowly, mindful of the spine. Some of the pages have come loose of their binding and they nearly slip out before she tucks them back in.

 _The Tarot_ , is written in a neat, precise hand on the first page.

Directly below it, in a slightly messy but still legible scrawl, is written, _Someone once gave this to me when I was first starting out. Give it a read—the salamander upstairs will help you make some tea, if you ask nicely enough._

There is no signature, but she knows who it’s from all the same. She snaps the book shut and turns it over, as if glaring at the back will solve her problems.

She gathers up the cards, the little pouch for them and the strange bag that no matter how she holds it she can’t see what’s inside. She inspects the rest of the shop, but finds it full of things she can’t identify—jars with the same handwriting as before, though notably different from Asra’s.

By the time she’s gotten tired of trying to figure out what anyone could possibly use _trimmings from roots dangling off a cliff_ for, Cinis is meowing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her to follow.

Upstairs, curtains have been pulled back from windows, letting in the grey Vesuvia daylight. There is a small kitchen immediately at the top, with a table and two chairs and a small, yet comfortable looking couch in the center of the room. Behind a beaded curtain and around a corner is a single bed, and a dresser full of clothes in a wide variety of colours, all of them impossibly soft yet strangely sturdy.

Much of it looks like it’ll fit her, so she tries to stuff a pair of pants in the borrowed bag—and finds that it vanishes within, the outside of the bag and how much it weighs utterly unchanged. She reaches in, and her hand closes around the pants, and she pulls them out again.

She hesitates only a moment before stuffing a drawer’s worth of clothing into the bag.

On top of the dresser is a small, ornately carved box made from a pale wood with streaks of orange-red running through it. The carved lid depicts a fox, darting between trees, a red flash in a pale forest.

She opens the box and finds a small collection of gemstones—some on rings, some on necklaces, some on their own. She’s half tempted to shove the whole thing in her bag, and somehow get it to Portia to sell. But she’s not certain she’ll ever manage it, or who even would _buy_ something like this, these days.

There’s a lavender-coloured one, set on a thin silver necklace. On a whim she takes that, slips it over her neck and tucks it under her shirt.

Satisfied she’s gone through everything, she returns to the kitchen and opens up the stove, looking for a place to light it.

And comes face to face with a small lizard, glowing like a hot coal.

It trills when it sees her—wiggling in place, broad back spines fanning out as it smells her with its tongue, and then it turns in place several times before it begins to glow brighter, and brighter, and the wood in the stove begins to catch fire.

“Uh,” she says, blinking curiously at it. “Thanks?”

It trills happily.

Beside the stove is a small basket of wood, so she puts a few more pieces in the stove before closing the door. And then, after a moment’s thought, she opens it again and offers the lizard one of the red fruits from the tree—it makes more delighted sounds, so she tosses it in with a smile.

There is a plain kettle waiting on the stove, and as the salamander builds the fire she heads back down to fill the kettle with water from the yard. It’s quiet and peaceful, still, not a sound coming from the street past the walls.

After putting the kettle on the stove, she peers out one of the windows to see the guards standing outside, huddled together in the streets. They appear to be… drawing strings?

She watches the one who apparently drew the shortest run full-tilt towards the shop. He bounces off an invisible barrier and goes flying backwards across the street, out of view.

For what feels like the first time since this whole mess started, Kai laughs.

Cinis chirps happily in reply. She turns from the window to see him sprawled out along the back of the couch, his tail swaying lazily over its side.

When the water is boiled, she finds a heavy cast iron teapot with koi fish swirling along its sides, and a tin of… _very_ smoky black tea. She makes a face at first, but it’s the only one she can find, so with a sigh she gets the pot brewing while she looks for a cup.

She eats one of the strange red fruit, and finds it delightfully sweet-sour. The rest of the fruit and berries she gets in a bowl, though by the time the tea has finished brewing she’s eaten half of them.

Once the pot is rinsed out and drying—Mazelinka would tan her hide if she left tea leaves in a pot—she sits down on the couch with her cup of tea and her bowl of fruit, and waits for Cinis to slip down off the back of the couch and into her lap. He kneads her for a moment, purring happily, before curling up and settling down.

Kai pauses a moment to smooth out his fur, to scratch behind his ears and to let his closeness soothe her. He is warm on her lap, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes rhythmic, and as always she finds her thoughts less scattered, her worries farther away with him near. She takes a sip of the tea and, while it is _very_ smoky, she also finds it earthy and rich, like food cooked over Mazelinka’s little fireplace.

So calmed, she opens the book on tarot, resting it on the armrest as she begins to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey team, from here on out this will probably be more snippet-y and out of order and such. I'm really not looking to start another Big Project right now, these two chapters had to be chronological to establish the setting. We're gonna jump around a lot but I promise it'll be fun.
> 
> Anything you wanna see in particular, [send me an ask on my writing blog](http://dinoswrites.tumblr.com/ask).


	4. The Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Lovers reversed indicates that you are avoiding responsibility for the consequences of your own actions… You must do what you can to make amends but if this is not possible, let the past go and resolve to make better choices in the future. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/lovers/)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cedarmoons wrote [this delightful scene with Asra and Kai in Vesuvia](http://cedarmoons.tumblr.com/post/176635618032/written-for-my-fic-swap-with), so I had to do a follow-up of course. <3

 

It’s another maddeningly grey Vesuvia morning, and Asra is climbing the back wall to the old shop.

Second time he’s done so in as many days—and it’s hard not to let old memories resurface as he swings one leg over the top, and looks down at the overgrown garden, at the rain rippling the water of the reflecting pool.

He remembers it so clearly he can almost see her there. Can almost see the moonlight reflecting in the pool’s clear, still waters, and its shine in her hair as she looks up, and her whole face _light up_ for a moment, before she schools her expression.

_My aunt says that you’re trouble._

_Me? Oh, it’s the hair, isn’t it? Should I cut it? Is it too long?_

To this day, he remembers perfectly the coyness of her smile—he’s seen it countless times since, and heard her laugh nearly as often.

Not nearly enough, he thinks, looking down at the rain in the garden.

He hangs his scarf and cloak by the door, not before chasing any leftover rain from them with an absent-minded spell. He has to step around a large woven basket that’s overflowing with fruit harvested from the garden before he can look into the shop—finding it exactly as he left it. Every jar still in its place, every ingredient still on display.

He is not surprised to see the tarot cards missing from where he left them on the table, but the sight does bring a smile to his face.

Upstairs, the stove salamander has already built up a rolling flame, chasing the rain chill out of the room. Asra can smell lapsang souchong in the air, and as he lets Faust slip off his arm to go find her favourite pillow he spots Kai curled up on the couch, a cup in one hand and one of the books he’d leant her open on the armrest, her fingertip running along the page as she reads.

She’s wrapped up in one of her old shawls. The cream one, with amber-coloured stars knit all along its edges. One of the first gifts he’d ever bought her.

It’s such an image from his memory that he stalls a moment—this tea, this place, that shawl and _her,_ so utterly lost in her reading that she hasn’t even noticed him.

_Kai!_ Faust calls, delighted.

She looks up, startled. And then she smiles for a moment, _and it’s exactly like he remembers_ , for half a broken heartbeat.

_She doesn’t remember you_ , he reminds himself.

And yet it gets harder, every time he sees her.

From her lap comes the low growl of an angry cat, and out from the shawl pops a small black head, with golden eyes that have all the glow of burning embers. It’s the cat he’d seen skulking in the background of their impromptu magic discussion at the Rowdy Raven, though this is the first clear look he’s gotten of it.

“Hello,” Asra says.

The cat’s ears flatten against its skull, and it hisses at him.

Faust is utterly undeterred by the display of aggression from the cat, and slithers over to it, delighted.

_Friend!_

“Cinis,” Kai scolds, but the cat does not listen. It leaps from her lap and scurries to the highest place it can find—over the kitchen cabinets—and continues to hiss as Faust slithers up onto the counter after it.

She hangs her head upside down as she looks up at him. _Friend?_

“I’m sorry,” Kai says. “He’s—he’s uh—he’s not friendly.”

But Asra’s too busy looking at the cat to pay Kai much mind. At his glowing eyes, and how well the rest of him blends in with the shadows up there, at how well he crams himself into such a small space. _Better than the average cat, even,_ he muses, and he feels a small smile begin to spread over his face.

“Hello there,” he calls, softly.

The cat turns his ember-eyed glare on Asra.

And he feels it, then. Oh, it’s a mess—a rage and distrust that it’s nearly a physical thing, nearly a wall radiating outward from such a tiny creature. He takes another step forward and the cat’s eyes flash, and the room feels markedly warmer.

Asra reaches out, without reaching—and he feels a link between the cat and Kai. It’s hardly like the one he shares with Faust; it’s twisted, and all gnarled up like a ball of twine, but it is solid, and strong, and he can feel power flowing from one to the other at a steady trickle, getting lost in the maze of their connection to one another.

“You found your familiar,” Asra says, his voice full of wonder.

The cat blinks down at him, some of its rage waning, replaced by a note of confusion.

“My _what_?”

Asra stands at the bottom of the cabinets and looks up at Cinis. The cat shifts his weight uneasily, and his hissing has waned to a low warning growl, though his fur is still on end.

“Amazing,” he says. “You managed to bond without even knowing it—and so strongly! Can you hear him speak?” he asks, turning back to Kai.

She’s staring at him like he’s speaking another language. “He’s a cat, Asra. Cats don’t talk.”

He can’t help a laugh. “Neither do snakes,” he teases, reaching out so Faust can slither up his arm. “But you can hear Faust well enough. And your _cat_ is no ordinary cat.”

Kai narrows her eyes at him, unconvinced. A glance backwards at Cinis confirms that, though he is still radiating a general unpleasantness, his ears are forward, and he’s interested in what Asra has to say.

“Let me guess,” Kai drolls, “he’s got _magic,_ too.”

Asra hums, amused, scratching Faust under her chin to placate her before pouring a cup of tea for himself. He joins Kai on the couch, and Faust immediately slithers up Kai’s arm to rest on her shoulder, nuzzling her head against her chin.

Kai lets out an _infinitesimal_ laugh, and starts to scratch Faust’s chin.

Asra’s heart flips in his chest, and almost feels whole again.

_She does not remember you_.

“I once visited a land across the sea, where there were ancient jungles with trees so tall and so crowded together that they blocked out all the sunlight. Their branches are so broad and strong, that some animals live their entire lives out in their canopies without once seeing the ground.”

Her gaze rises back from Faust to him—her eyes wide with that familiar curiosity, slowly winning out over the caution and fear a year in Lucio’s city has bred in her.

“The locals there lived among the trees—the soil was poor, but they burned down sections of the forest at a time to enrich the soil, and grow their crops. And there was a story they used to tell at those burnings—about a boy who learned to call fire, by befriending one of the shadow cats that live in the dark spaces between the trees.”

“A shadow cat,” she wonders—and there is only a trace of disbelief in her voice, now.

“It’s… hard to translate. The word they used was more like, _the shadow cast by a great figure blocking a fire._ The locals assured me that they live in the forest still, even though I couldn’t find one. And I _looked_ , trust me. They’re master shapeshifters, slipping between the smallest of gaps between the trees, or growing large enough to devour the greatest of prey.”

“Like rats?” she asks. She keeps shifting closer, and he doesn’t think she knows she’s doing it.

“The biggest I’ve ever seen,” Asra says—and he mimes for her one’s size off the ground, at around knee height, just to watch her eyes go wide. “Giant birds, fish twice as long as you are tall—snakes that could wrap around this room twice, and then half that again.”

Faust looks uneasily over at the cat. _Friend?_ she asks uncertainly.

“You said he learned fire from them,” Kai says. “The boy in the story.”

Asra inclines his head towards her, just a little. “The story goes that when the cats are angry, or they’re in danger and there’s no other way out, they call on the fire within—the one that glows in their eyes, even in the light—and they raze the forest to the ground.”

Kai hums a little. She bites her lip, her gaze dropping for a moment in thought before snapping back up to his again. “And you think Cinis is one of these… shadow cats? But I just found him in a barrel one day. How did he wind up here?”

“The black market, undoubtedly,” Asra says. He inclines his head toward the kitchen table. “Though I think, given enough time, you could simply ask him yourself.”

Kai looks over—and there is Cinis, down from his perch atop the cabinets, sitting on the table. He is still studying Asra with a dubious expression, even for a cat, but when Kai regards him his ears perk up, and his tail swishes a little.

“As it stands,” Asra tells her, “your auras are tangled, and everything caught in them is weighing them down. Closing them into you—so your bond, though strong, is carrying all that negative energy with it, and it doesn’t have the space to grow.”

Her expression twists. There is some disbelief in her expression, though not as much as Asra would have thought at the start of this conversation.

“I could provide a bit of a head start,” he says, tentatively. “If you like.”

Kai and Cinis meet gazes for a long, long moment. Eventually, Cinis sits a little straighter, and lets out a soft _mrr_.

She exhales. “If Cinis is alright with it,” she says, right before the cat in question jumps from the table to her lap. He head-butts her chin, and she laughs a little before indulging him by scratching behind his ears.

“I believe everything we need is downstairs,” Asra says, rising off the couch.

In truth, he needs very little. Water from a high mountain glacier, melted from its ice in the sunlight, a single, perfectly cut clear quartz crystal, and oil derived from eucalyptus leaves.

“Should we… sit on the floor or something?” Kai asks, shifting her weight nervously as Asra brings what he needs back upstairs. “Are you… going to draw a magic circle? With chalk or…”

Asra looks out the window to the garden. “The rain’s stopped,” he muses. “How about we try this outside, instead?”

He leads her down the stairs, and out into the garden. She wears the shawl, still. Cinis walks at her side, glaring at Asra and radiating a general protectiveness that makes the magician smile.

She sits at the edge of the pool, Cinis in her lap, and Asra sits beside her with Faust draped over his shoulders. The morning is grey and smoky, but he can’t help of think of moonlight in her hair, or its shine in her burnt umber eyes.

So, so badly, he wants to say: I kissed you here for the first time. Under the moonlight, under the stars. Remember me. _Please, remember me._

But Lucio has her in the palm of his hand, golden talons curling around her like a cage, and the less she knows, the safer she is.

So instead he says, “Your wrists, please.”

She hesitates only a moment before offering them. He drops a dot of eucalyptus oil on the inside of each of her wrists, before doing the same for himself.

He has the clear glacier water in a bowl, and he has her hold it in her hands, low enough so Cinis can look into it too.

“Your familiar is more than just a pet,” Asra says, letting the crystal hang from its chain above the water. “They are creatures of magic, just as much as you or I. Your bond right now is tangled, uncertain—I think you made it together but without guidance, when you were both very weak.”

She glances down at Cinis. The cat’s ear twitches, and he radiates a general unhappiness, as if at an unpleasant memory.

“With a strong enough bond, Cinis can assist in spells you are casting, can more easily find you in a crowd or across distances, and he can communicate more clearly with you his own thoughts and feelings. But first—that bond needs a chance to grow.”

He moves his hand so the crystal begins to swing back and forth, just above the surface of the water. Towards Asra, then towards Kai, and then back again.

On his shoulder, Faust begins to sway in time with the crystal. Cinis watches it swing back and forth, ears forward, his posture alert.

Kai stares deep into Asra’s eyes and doesn’t look away.

“Think back on meeting one another,” Asra explains in a low, even voice. “Focus on anything positive you felt about the encounter—is there anything you remember standing out in particular?”

Her eyes flutter closed, and she swallows. “He was warm and soft against my back,” she says, quietly. “When he was asleep.”

“Very good,” he says. “How about you? How did you feel, when he was close to you?”

She hesitates a moment, and her eyes flicker as if she’s embarrassed. “I—I didn’t feel lonely, anymore.”

“What you didn’t feel is good. But what you need to focus on is what you _did_ feel.”

She exhales.

After a long silence, Asra says, “Kai, I’m only here to guide you. This is something that you and Cinis have to work through together.”

The silence stretches again, so long that Asra nearly sighs and gives up before Kai says, very softly, “I felt—I felt a little more whole.”

His half a heart beats hard against his chest.

“Focus on that,” Asra says. “Just focus on you, and Cinis, and _that feeling_. Let everything else drift past you, through your hands, and into the water in the bowl.”

Her brows furrow, and she clenches her jaw.

“Don’t force it,” he warns her. “Just… just _feel,_ Kai. That’s all you have to do.”

She breathes deep again—and again, and _again_ , and Asra watches her struggle, watches as her hands begin to grip the bowl too tightly—

Cinis closes his eyes and begins to purr.

Louder than Asra thinks such a little cat has any right to. He’s honestly so startled by the sound that he nearly drops the crystal into the water. But that little cat purrs, and begins to knead Kai’s crossed legs with his sharp claws, and starts to rub his head against her arm.

Kai lets out a breath. A soft, quiet release of air, and the air around her slowly begins to shift.

Asra watches, his breath in his throat, as Kai’s aura slowly begins to uncoil from where it’s been hiding, deep within herself.

_There you are_ , he thinks. Nearly says it, but open wonder stops the words from escaping his throat.

And oh, it’s tentative, that brightness within her. Like the flicker of a candle in the night, an uncertain flame held between two palms. But there it is, bright and warm, and Asra watches as it stretches out from her, as it meets the aura blazing out from Cinis—bright and bold like a bonfire, confident and _sure._

He watches hers grow in strength, encouraged by the tiny, impressively brave cat in her lap. He watches them twine—and is it his imagination, or is the sky a little less grey? Does a little more sunlight seep through the clouds than before, or is it just the warmth growing in his chest as he watches a smile spread over her face?

Their auras settle, their bond untangled. She opens her eyes, and looks down at the bowl in her hands, the water blackened by all the negative energy trapped in her aura, before immediately turning her gaze down to Cinis.

“Is that how you’ve felt this whole time?” she asks, voice low with awe.

He turns around and stands up on his hind legs so he can rub his face against hers while he radiates pure, uncomplicated happiness. She _laughs_ , bright and warm and loud, and sets the bowl aside in the grass to smooth down his fur, and scratch him behind the ears.

Faust winds herself around Asra’s neck. She does not say anything, but he can feel her contentment all the same, and he scratches her chin in reply.

Kai reaches up to wipe at her eyes with the heel of her palm, before finally turning her gaze to Asra.

She might as well be _glowing_. More or less is, with her aura shining out, unfettered by her loneliness.

The sight of it catches in his throat.

“Thank you,” she says. “I— _thank you_ , Asra. I don’t know how I could…”

He raises a hand. “All I did was give you a push,” he tells her, leaning forward to collect the bowl. “You and Cinis did the rest.”

Cinis meows, as if confirming Asra’s general uselessness. His eyes glow even brighter than before.

Asra can only laugh.

As Asra is dumping the water in a corner that drains out of the garden, Kai blurts, “Teach me magic.”

He stills. He rises, turns slowly, trying to calm the racing of his heart.

Kai is standing—still by the reflecting pool, biting her lower lip and holding her familiar in her arms.

“Please,” she adds, uncertainly.

He remembers to breathe. Remembers to smile, and tease—“Why?” he asks, busying himself with shaking the last drop of water from the bowl. “I thought magic was illegal.”

“So is shoving Lucio off a cliff, but it would probably improve things a little around here.”

He can’t help but laugh at _that_ —deep, full-bellied laughter, the kind that he hasn’t let out in…

“Asra, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this city needs _help_.” She approaches him, and now he is forced to face her properly. To look down at her as she looks up at him, and to stare down into her burnt umber eyes, and see the flecks within that are nearly black. _Just as he remembers._

“It’s been a year since the countess’s death, and there are _still_ riots. Julian’s done what he can, but the plague is going to kill us all sooner or later. If we don’t starve to death first.”

“And you’re asking the man you’ve been charged to find—on pain of death—to teach you the art of magic, decreed illegal by the monarch you just suggested we murder.”

She smirks in reply—with an all-too-familiar and entirely dangerous gleam in her eye. “I didn’t say it had to be a very _tall_ cliff.”

A huff of laughter escapes him, in spite of himself. But his thoughts are already turning back—already thinking of the argument they had, before he fled the plague and she stayed behind.

_Magic is meant to help people_ , she’d said. _I won’t leave this city to rot._

She does not remember that argument. Does not remember _him_ , but here she is. In this garden, with the shawl he bought her a lifetime ago slipping off her shoulder.

“First lesson,” he begins.

He watches her eyes light up, and his slow-mending heart beats faster in its own answering delight.


	5. The Chariot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reversed, the Chariot suggests that you are feeling as if you have very little control over your life. You may have lost steering power over the opposing forces and you are now at their mercy… The Chariot reversed also suggests that you are collapsing under pressure and losing your self-control. Your aggression is being channeled in the wrong direction, wildly at other people, at fate, at external circumstances. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/chariot/)]

Julian knows Asra is in town. He has heard all the rumours—and has certainly put up with more of Lucio’s spitting rages on the subject of  _ that magician  _ than usual.

To be more specific,  _ Portia _ told him all the rumours while he chugged a pint of beer. And then he wandered into her community garden, turned right back around again, and pointed at the apple tree while yelling  _ how did this happen Pasha what did you do _ and such, not stopping until someone threw a bottle at his head.

“Someone is going to come and burn it down,” he’d told her, trying to use a tankard full of beer as a cold compress and only sort of succeeding.

She had shrugged, with that eye roll he’s only ever seen her use in his direction. “Then I’ll have better soil for the next round,” she had quipped. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, over there is a customer who actually  _ pays his damn tab _ .”

“I’m your  _ brother, _ ” Julian had griped, but she was already gone.

So  _ yes _ , he knows Asra’s back in town. He can’t help that his feelings are a tad  _ mixed _ on the subject of Vesuvia’s Most Wanted—but even with all their sordid history, Julian can’t believe for a second that Asra killed the countess. After all, Julian’s only known Asra to be cruel to two people.

So  _ yes _ , he’s more than a little worried, and more than a little…  _ off-center _ , as he always is when he stops for thirty seconds and just thinks of every single thing that could possibly go wrong in this city.

Why did Asra come back after all this time?

Why hasn’t he sought out Julian yet?

Why  _ would _ he seek out Julian, anyway?

What happens if Asra gets caught?

What happens if Asra  _ never _ gets caught?

Which is worse?

What happens to Kai at the end of all this?

His head is buzzing with alcohol and sombre thoughts as he unlocks the door to his clinic late in the evening. He breezes through the clinic itself, heading immediately to the small, meagre living area at the back. He means only to grab some of Kai’s extra clothes, and maybe some things to ease her headaches, before heading back to the palace to check on her.

And, you know. Make sure Lucio hasn’t gotten bored and killed her on a whim or something.

It shows how used he is to Kai and her cat being here that he… forgets the cat isn’t there. He’s so busy looking for telltale glowing eyes hiding among the high shelves, and waiting for Kai’s miserable demon cat to jump on his head,  _ even though the cat is not even present, _ that he almost doesn’t register the door closing behind him. Or the lock turning—and  _ that _ makes his steps falter, and the hair on the back of his neck rise as he turns—

And comes face to face with Vesuvia’s Most Wanted. His soft purple eyes wide, his expression panicked.

“Ilya,” Asra says, “I need your help.”

Julian sputters. He can feel his cheeks start to warm, and he backpedals a few steps, rapidly putting distance between Asra and himself, before straightening, and doing his level best to scowl down at Asra from his superior height.

“Oh really?” he says. “Let me guess, someone caught onto you running around the city and making shrubbery grow five feet overnight?”

Asra rolls his eyes. “I don’t have  _ time _ for your dramatics, Ilya—”

“Oh, but you have time to wander around the docks and bless the fishermen’s nets to catch double the fish?”

“Ilya would you just  _ listen _ —”

“In case you were  _ wondering _ , this morning Lucio ordered every damn fishing net left in this miserable city to be burned, and you’re  _ damn _ lucky it wasn’t any of the fishermen or I’d be strangling you where you stand—”

“He’s got Muriel,” Asra blurts.

“Who?” Julian waves a hand and turns on his heel. “He’s got  _ everyone _ here exactly where he wants them, Asra, you can’t expect me to run out the door and break into the dungeons with you every time he arrests someone.”

As Julian storms into Kai’s room, Asra follows hot on his heels. “I can’t—I can’t get to him by myself. Believe me, I’ve  _ tried _ .”

Julian throws open Kai’s dresser drawers—finding it full of things for her miserable cat, like a chewed up ball of twine… and Julian’s favourite shirt that he lost two months ago. He holds it up, finding it shredded to ribbons and held together only by the collar.

He sighs,  _ deeply _ , before tossing the offending item onto Kai’s bed and closing the drawer. “You, unable to do something on your own? I can’t imagine that for a moment.”

“I’m being  _ serious _ , Ilya.”

“And I’m—”

There is a loud, panicked banging at the clinic’s front door, followed by the sound of someone yelling.

Julian groans. Asra automatically steps aside, his head is titled as if he recognises the voice.

Once Julian opens the door that separates the clinic from the living space, however, he can hear the shouting clearly.

“Dr. Devorak! Dr. Devorak! Oh god, please be here—Dr. Devorak?”

Behind him, Asra suddenly goes very still.

It takes him a moment to put a name to that voice— _ right _ , a few months back, the one with the sister… “Trevor?” Julian calls back. “Stop—stop yelling, I’ll be right there—”

He swings open the door, and Trevor stands on the other side in full, if slightly charred, city guard attire, holding Kai prone in his arms.

“She won’t snap out of it,” Trevor says, as Julian feels his heart drop in his chest. “She’s—she’s not—I don’t know what to—”

Julian hears a short, irritated spat, and glances down to see a streak of black tear between their legs and into the clinic. The streak becomes cat-shaped again in the middle room, and the cat’s back arches and all his fur stands on end as it begins to growl at Asra, standing with the far door hanging open.

His lips hang slack, his eyes are impossibly wide, as he stares right past Julian at Kai.

“There was—it was a riot, and I was supposed to—I’m supposed to protect her it’s my  _ job _ but there was so much fire and— _ and _ —”

Julian turns back to Trevor. “Don’t just  _ stand _ there,” he snaps, as if he hasn’t just been blocking the door. “Get her inside! Quickly!”

Trevor’s mouth slams shut, and though he looks to be on the verge of tears he manages to hold it together with a nod.

As Julian breezes through the clinic, he hears Trevor scramble inside and towards the first open door. “Not there,” Julian says without looking, breezing right past the demon cat and the dumbstruck Asra.

He directs Trevor to sit her on the couch, and gives her a quick once-over. Her eyes are open, but her expression is vacant as she stares at nothing in particular. There is a streak of dried blood trailing from her nose, but her pulse is steady, her breathing slow but even.

Julian can hear the sound of dented and ill-fitting armour scraping against itself as Trevor shifts uselessly behind him. “Is she gonna…”

“She’s through the worst of it,” Julian says, standing. He goes to the tiny kitchen and begins looking through cabinets—ignoring the hiss from the cat and the responding  _ yelp _ from Trevor as the poor boy makes the unfortunate mistake of getting between the cat and the only person who can stand him.

“Trevor? Tell me what happened,” he calls, arm-deep in a cabinet as he reaches around some medical supplies that have made their way back here. Apparently Kai had given up on filling the cabinets with  _ actual food _ and he hadn’t even noticed. “Everything you can remember. Alright?”

Trevor stammers a little in reply. “I uh—there was a—um. Is that. Should he be…?”

Julian’s hand grasps the jar he’s been looking for, and he hits his head on the cabinet as he turns around.

Asra is kneeling in front of Kai, holding her hands in his, and looking up into her eyes with the single most pained expression Julian has ever seen on his face.

As Julian watches, Asra brings one shaking hand up to cup her face. He runs his thumb along her cheekbone, while the other rubs circles on the back of her hand. Faust has slithered out of his clothes, and has coiled herself loosely around Kai’s neck. He’s not sure but he thinks the snake is trembling a little.

Asra’s saying something to Kai. So, so softly that Julian can’t hear it.

Of course, she does not respond. But Julian hesitates a moment anyway. He watches magic flare in Asra’s hands, watches Asra’s face twist with determination, and watches as he presses his forehead to hers, closes his eyes, and Julian doesn’t have a prayer of understanding what Asra tries to do but he tries it anyway. Magic pulsing from his hands in waves, pouring over Kai like mist through trees.

She stares at nothing, her expression vacant and unchanging. Julian watches Asra’s expression fall, watches his eyes open, and watches him withdraw from Kai, Faust slithering back up his arm and around his neck.

“What happened?” he asks without even glancing back. His tone flat and his eyes dark.

Trevor looks uncertainly between Julian and Asra. He straightens, then swallows.

“There was—” He pauses to take a series of long, deep breaths, clearly trying to calm down. “We had dropped off some food on the wharf. I’m—I promised I wouldn’t report it, and I won’t, it was fruit and berries and… and I know people need it. And we were supposed to go right back to the castle after—and I was, I  _ was _ paying attention, I was watching the crowd like I’m supposed to, like I’m told, but—”

“Alright,” Julian says, crossing the room. “Trevor, we don’t blame you.”

Asra’s eyes narrow.

Julian rolls his eyes. He awkwardly leans around Asra to take Kai’s hands, and he moves them until she holds the jar he’s brought from the kitchen.

Cinis, hovering on the back of the couch, hisses until Julian backs away, and then crawls into her lap and begins to knead her legs. Julian tries to unscrew the jar, but Cinis growls at him, so he yanks his hand out of the way before the cat decides to claw him.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he sees Trevor looking for all the world like he’s about to burst into tears. “Just… maybe the focus on the  _ important details _ , hm?”

Trevor nods. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, a little more calmly now. “I—one minute, everything was fine, and the next… The next, people were throwing bottles, and shouting at Miss Kai, and I was trying to keep everyone away from her but there were so many, pressing in, and someone had a sword—”

Julian frowns. “A knife, maybe? Trevor, the average person hasn’t been allowed to even own a sword for a year.”

That only makes him nod more furiously, though. “It was a sword, a real one. One of the ones the guards use, like—like mine.” He goes to pull his from his scabbard to show them, but hisses in pain the moment his palm grazes the pommel.

When he pulls his hand back, Julian finally gets a good look at it. Red all along the palm and his fingers, his skin flaking off in angry broken blisters.

“I thought—I thought for sure he was going to get her. There were so many people, I couldn’t move her in time… But then, it’s like the air around her lit on fire.”

Trevor looks down at his charred armour, at his wounded hand. “The man dropped his sword, and I tried to pick it up so I could—so I could figure out who he was, from it. Maybe. But it was so hot…”

“I imagine the crowd scattered after that,” Julian drawls, when Trevor’s silence stretches a little too long.

“Not until she started screaming,” Trevor says, softly.

Asra’s eyes flare wide in surprise and open horror.

“And she was—the fire was all around her, and I tried my best to put it out, I did. And her—her cat was crying at her, but it took… a good long while, before she stopped burning. And then she was just… standing there. Staring off at nothing, like that, and she just—I couldn’t—”

Trevor  _ does _ start crying then, and he’s clearly embarrassed about it because he tries to wipe at his face with his wounded hand. Which only makes him wince, and then start to really cry, then—big, ugly, pained sobs that have been held in too long.

Abruptly, Asra stands. He crosses the distance between himself and the crying boy, who is so startled that he actually stops sobbing for a moment, looking at Asra with wide, watery eyes.

Asra takes the boy’s hand in his own, and they begin to glow the soft silver of the moon on a clear night. It takes little time at all—there is a sound like a nighttime breeze moving through summer trees, and then the glow fades, and Asra drops his hands.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks. It sounds, Julian thinks, like an apology.

Trevor looks at his hand—good as new—with open awe.

“Uh,” he manages to say, opening and closing his hand.

Asra hesitates a moment. “Thank you for bringing her here,” he says, finally.

Trevor blinks at Asra a few times. “It’s my job. I… I guess.”

Behind Julian, Cinis meows, like a perfectly normal cat who isn’t secretly a ball of death and terror.

“Oh, is she ready now?” Julian asks, turning to scrutinize the cat.

The cat in question is glaring up at Julian, his ears flat against his skull.

Julian sighs, then leans down and unscrews the lid of the jar.

The smell that wafts out is… not pleasant. He actually thinks it’s  _ worse _ than he remembered—maybe Mazelinka was lying and whatever the hell was in there actually  _ is _ festering, after all this time. It smells like that jar of leeches he’d forgotten about on top of a high shelf—until Cinis knocked it off said shelf and onto Julian’s head one day, the miserable creature. Maybe if those leeches were wrapped up in a particularly smelly sock…

Whatever it is, it’s the best way to snap Kai out of… wherever she goes, when she spaces out like this.

When she inhales it, her eyes widen, and then she blinks rapidly until she just keeps them closed, her nose scrunching up as her grip tightens so hard around the jar it looks like she might break it—but she simply holds it out, and Julian takes it.

Cinis proceeds to purr as loud as he can, and crawl all over her while she pets him with shaking hands, her eyes still closed.

On Asra’s shoulders, Faust is nearly bolt upright, wavering back and forth with visible excitement, but the presence of the cat seems to be deterring her from going over to Kai.

“How are you feeling?” Julian asks, standing as close as he dares.

“Fuck off,” Kai replies, her voice rough and cracking.

He can’t help a little smile. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Fuck. Off.” She inhales, slow and deliberate, and sinks a little into the couch as Julian screws the lid back on the jar. “Kai,” she replies, finally.

“Who am I?”

“The asshole who makes me smell that shit.” Another deep breath. “Dr. Julian Devorak.”

The cat meows, kneading her collarbone while he tucks his head into the crook of her neck, and she hums a little. “Cinis,” she says to him, softly, as if answering his question.

“Do you know where you are?”

With an air of reluctance, she cracks one eye open. She seems to relax a little when she sees their home, but then her gaze turns to Asra and Trevor, and she opens both eyes as she stares at them, looking a little confused.

“Asra?” she asks. “Trevor? What—Asra, what are you  _ doing _ here? And—Trevor, what happened to your—”

She tries to stand up, clearly alarmed as she sees the scorch marks on Trevor’s armour, only for the cat to let out a high, whining complaint of a meow until she settles on the couch again.

She closes her eyes, and brings a hand to her forehead. “I’m fine,” she says, to no one in particular. “I’m…”

“Going to get some rest while I make you some coffee,” Julian finishes for her when she trails off. “Trevor, would you help her to her room, please? It’s that door, there.”

Trevor stands to attention. “Yes, Dr. Devorak, sir,” he says, and actually half-attempts a salute before he seems to remember where he is, and sort of flails a little in the air. He does, after a moment of standing there awkwardly, go and offer a hand up to Kai, but she waves him off.

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” she repeats. She squints up at Julian, and then at Asra, at whom her gaze softens just a little. “Is this how you hide from the city guard?” she croaks, with a strained attempt at a half smile.

Asra exhales. He reaches out to Kai, and runs his fingertips across her forehead. There is that familiar moonlight glow, Kai’s eyes flutter closed, and Faust slithers back over to Kai as Asra’s touch lingers even after his magic fades.

“Better?” he asks, his voice tight.

She hums low in her throat. Her eyes open again, and it’s hard to miss the  wonder in her eyes as she looks up at Asra. “A little.”

Thinking of all the times he looked at Asra like that, Julian feels his stomach twist, and has to resist the urge to grab Asra by the shoulder and drag him out into the street.

The cat growls at Faust, who takes up residence on Kai’s opposite shoulder and rubs her head against Kai’s jaw.

Asra exhales. He runs the backs of his knuckles across her forehead, before finally, and with great reluctance, withdrawing his touch.

“You really should rest,” he says, no longer quite looking at her.

Asra, turning away, doesn’t see Kai deflate. He doesn’t see the hurt in her eyes, or the way she tightens her jaw when he leaves her.

Julian does.

And he can’t help but remember, months ago, her sitting on that couch and that screaming cat in her lap, tears streaming down her face— _ Don’t send me away! I didn’t mean to use magic, I don’t even remember doing it! Please Julian, please don’t make me leave. _

Julian runs a hand over his face.

Kai finally allows Trevor to lead her to her room, and then Julian suggests the young man sit down in his own room, and collect himself a moment. Maybe clean his armour a bit, though Julian supposes the kid will probably just have a good private cry where no one can see him.

Once the door closes, Julian and Asra are alone in the living area once again.

Asra sits on the couch and looks down at his hands, silent.

Julian’s stomach twists into knots as he tries to figure out what to say. As he tries to figure out how to ask what he thinks, or what to accuse Asra of.

_ Stay away from Kai _ ? She’s certainly old enough to make her own choices. Even if Asra is probably the worst choice Julian ever made.

_ Care to tell me how you know my friend? Or why you seem to worried she’s using fire magic? She lost all her memories a year ago, by the way, care to help her out with that? _

There are too many questions, and he knows himself enough to admit he’s too on edge to ask them without making it a fight. So he busies himself with the press, and the pot, and then there’s the whole system he’s set up to filter the boiled water so it’s not literally poison but he seems to be out of filters…

Before Julian’s eyes, the kettle is filled with clean, clear water, without so much as a word from Asra.

Julian exhales. He tries to put the lid back on the kettle, but his hands are shaking too much. He leans on the counter, instead, and  _ yes _ , his heart is racing, and his breath is ragged and uneven but there is so much  _ history _ in this room that he just wants to scream.

So he says, at length, “How long have you known Kai?”

Asra exhales, that single breath a heavy, potent thing. “I came here three days ago—”

He slams his hands on the counter. “For  _ fuck’s  _ sake, Asra.” He whirls on his feet, and when Asra is still looking down at his hands, Julian throws his own up in the air. “For once in your miserable life can you just… be  _ level  _ with me! Pretend for a minute that you respect me, and my  intelligence, and explain to me why you are looking at the woman I have been housing for a year like… Shit, Asra, I don’t know, like she actually matters to you? Though it’s not like I’d know what  _ that _ looks like, would I?”

Asra buries his face in his hands, and takes a single, shuddering breath. And then another, and another, and Julian stands there like an idiot as Asra sits on his terrible couch and…

Asra falls apart. Asra sits there on that couch and  _ weeps _ into his hands, and Julian just watches him, stunned, his heart in his throat.

“I left her,” Asra says into his hands. “She—she  _ needed _ me, Ilya, and I left her. I left her to—”

He chokes on a sob.

“This is all my fault,” he says, so softly that Julian can barely hear it. “All of it. I—”

Julian watches Asra go to pieces on his couch, listens as he stutters through two more failed explanations. And all of his anger deflates, in the face of so much emotion. So much misery.

After all, he was always trying to pick up the pieces of the magician named Asra.

So, after a time, he sits next to Asra. Asra stiffens like he will flinch away—but in spite of their history, Julian doesn’t press it. He offers nothing but a sympathetic hand on Asra’s shoulder, not sitting close enough to touch anywhere else.

Julian isn’t expecting anything, really. Except maybe to be shoved off. Though he doesn’t want what he used to from Asra anymore, he thinks. It’s been a long and difficult year since he saw Asra last, even if he hadn’t seen the way Kai looked up at the magician just a few minutes ago. And he has his own reservations on  _ that _ —but he  _ knows _ Asra. And the things Julian admired in him once, he thinks the magician might have in him still.

“I don’t think the city being plunged into a hellstate is  _ entirely _ your fault, Asra,” he says with a crooked smile. “Pretty sure Lucio’s to blame for that.”

Asra lets out a surprised half-sob half-laugh. He leans into Julian’s touch a little—just a little.

Julian squeezes his shoulder.

Asra collects himself, wiping at his tear-flushed face with embarrassment, while Julian finishes with the coffee. Eventually, Asra joins him at the counter, helping him find enough cup-like objects in the cupboards for everyone.

As the final drop is poured, Asra says, “Thank you, Ilya. For looking after Kai.”

Julian shrugs. “Hey, what can I say. Kept life interesting,”

“I’m serious, Ilya.” Asra exhales—and Julian is forced to meet his gaze, his eyelids still puffy, his brows furrowed. “It’s not the first time she’s done that, is it. Used magic.”

Julian swallows. “No,” he answers. “No. She… she never remembers it.”

“Is it always fire?”

There’s a flash of fear in Asra’s eyes. Julian hardly even sees it—barely even catches it, Asra hides it s l. o well.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah. It’s happened… before. There’s not always magic, but when there is… she screams, and there’s fire.”

Asra’s jaw tightens. He looks for a moment like he’s about to cry again, but seems to compose himself by looking away.

_ Don’t send me away _ , Kai always begged him, those early times she spaced out. Even when she hadn’t used magic, and it was only over a broken jar, or getting lost in a crowd, or burnt food.  _ You and Portia and Mazelinka and Cinis—you’re all I have. Please. I don’t want to leave. _

Julian’s hands tremble, and he puts his cup down.

“I’ll help your friend,” he says. “But I need something from you in return.”

Asra looks back up at him, startled.

“First, you need to get Kai out of this city, and away from Lucio.”

“Of course,” Asra says, without hesitating. “She’s—the further she is from him, the better.”

Julian nods. And then keeps nodding, because—because—

“Ilya?”

He breathes out. “Promise me you won’t let her come back.”

Asra frowns. “Ilya—”

“I don’t care what she says, or how many things she throws at your head, or if she sics her damn cat on you. Just… promise me you will get her far away, and keep her safe. Promise me.”

Asra looks like he’s about to say more—but he must read something in Julian’s expression, because he only sighs, and shakes his head a little.

“I will,” he says. “ _ If _ you tell me what you have planned.”

Julian takes a deep, steadying breath. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.”

Asra tries to smile, but it does not quite reach his eyes.


	6. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strength reversed indicates weakness. You may have recently experienced a setback, or you are questioning your own journey and whether you are on the right track. Your inner strength and courage is lacking right now and you are feeling inadequate and vulnerable as a result. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/strength/)]

Kai honestly wants nothing more than to curl up into a ball and never leave her room again after the… _incident_ at the docks. As she always does after one of her episodes, she lies in her room with Cinis and cries a little and honestly just feels like a miserable wreck. This time Faust is there, too, radiating calm and saying _It’s okay_ and _Friend_ in her head, over and over.

Through her new bond with Cinis, she feels worry, and love, and a steady, persistent warmth.

But she has to return to the palace sometime before it gets too late—before Lucio sends people looking for her. She doesn’t remember what happened at the docks, but there were scorch marks on Trevor’s armour and she’s been out of it for an awful long time if he brought her directly here.

She thinks she hears Julian raising his voice, before she feels a flare of Asra’s magic and everything outside her door goes still and silent.

She must doze off a little, because Julian shakes her awake at some point and hands her a cup of hot coffee.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’d let you sleep, but…”

“Did I hurt anyone?” she asks.

Julian’s mouth twists. “No,” he lies, and when she scowls up at him he sighs and amends, “Alright, alright, Trevor burnt his hand trying to help you. Asra fixed him up, he’s fine, he’s just very worried about you. Oh, that and probably whoever was attacking you but—”

She inhales, sharply. Remembering all of a sudden the press of the crowd, shouting voices. A glint of metal in the light, and a determined face among all the others. Then, the smell of burning flesh—

“Hey,” Julian says. “Kai. _Kai_.”

She shakes her head, and then waves off Julian as he tries to pat at her cheeks. He’s already taken her cup away from her, or at least she assumes so because she isn’t holding it any longer.

“Stay with me,” he says, reaching out and steadying her with a hand on each shoulder. On her lap, Cinis radiates concern, and Faust wraps herself around Kai’s wrist and squeezes a little.

_Kai_ , Faust calls, as if trying to yell across a great distance.

She rubs at her nose to see if it’s bleeding—but the back of her hand only comes away with old, dried flakes on it.

“You okay?” Julian asks, eye wide and expression earnest.

She sighs. She closes her eyes a moment, and tries to let herself be grounded—tries to let Cinis and Faust and Julian comfort her, but…

“They’re getting worse,” she says, “aren’t they?”

Julian grips her shoulders tighter, and takes a deep, shaking breath. “We don’t know that,” he says. “We don’t—it’s the stress, Kai, you’ve had a rough couple of days, and before that we were so busy with this new wave of the plague, and—and I—”

Kai watches his expression falter, and his shoulders slump, as for once he tries to talk but simply fails to find the words.

She reaches up, and puts her hands over his. She grips them, tight, and tries to fight off the tears but she can feel them streaming down her face anyway.

“Hey,” Julian says, alarmed. “He, hey, Kai, don’t—oh, _now_ I’ve done it.”

“What are we going to _do,_ Julian?” she blurts. “What happens—what happens the next time? What if it’s worse? What if I don’t wake up after?”

He releases her long enough to pull her into a fierce, protective embrace.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Kai—I’m not going to let that happen. Okay? It’s not going to happen.”

She’s too surprised for a moment to react—but he only holds her tighter, and says, “It’s going to be alright,” over and over. Cinis rubs against her side, and Faust drapes herself over Kai’s shoulders, and Kai buries her face in Julian’s shirt and cries a little while longer.

 

Julian explains a little of Asra’s situation, once she’s cried herself out.

“Asra’s friend is in trouble,” he tells her. “He needs our help to get into the palace to get him out. I’ll have to keep Lucio busy in case Asra’s disguise fails, so it’s up to you to get him where he needs to go.”

“Why don’t we just go now?” she asks—even as off center as she is, she knows there’s more going on than Julian is telling her.

Julian looks away. “He’s… doing something for me in return, first.”

That’s… frustratingly vague. But she has no reason _not_ to help Asra, at this point, so she doesn’t press further.

Before Asra sneaks away into the streets, Kai watches him adorn himself with layer after layer of dark clothing. A long black shirt, a heavy cloak, that oversized scarf, and a broad and worn out hat.

Julian is putting together a remedy for Kai’s headaches in the clinic’s prep room, while Trevor waits outside and ensures the coast is clear for Asra to leave. Cinis is contentedly winding himself around one of Kai’s legs, and Faust remains loosely looped around her neck, where she has been since Kai finally left her room.

Asra tugs his cloak tight around himself, and Kai can’t help but think of all the colour of his clothing vanishing entirely under it. She knows those vibrant reds he’s wearing under all those layers would stand out too much on the streets of Vesuvia... But the room feels darker without them, all the same.

Maybe he feels it too, because once he is dressed he hesitates. He looks at her, and then down at Faust, smiling when he sees that Kai is scratching the little snake’s chin.

“Will your friend be alright tonight?” Kai asks.

Asra does not quite look at her. “He’s strong,” he says after a long moment’s pause. “I… don’t know if he’ll be _alright_.”

“I can look for him tonight,” Kai offers. “I’ll make up some excuse—”

“No,” Asra says. His eyes are wide and bright with worry under the brim of his hat. And then he sighs, and steps forward, and she can see the worry in his expression clearly. “Kai, I don’t want you involved in this _at all_ , let alone without me there in case something goes wrong.”

“It’ll be worse if you’re there when something goes wrong,” she insists. “Asra, Lucio wants you _dead_.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Asra quips. In spite of his small attempt at brevity, his eyes darken the way they seem to whenever the count comes up. “But we still don’t know what he wants with _you_. And I’m not sure I want to find out.”

She runs a hand through her hair. “Fine, no late night sneaking through the palace, got it,” she says, and Asra’s shoulders slump with visible relief. Though she thinks his eyes twinkle with amusement, she can’t be certain.

He holds out his hand. “Let’s go, Faust.”

_No_ , the snake replies, and tries to burrow into Kai’s shirt.

Asra lets out a sigh that is equal parts amusement and frustration. “Faust.”

_Friend,_ Faust replies. Her scales tickle Kai’s skin as she slithers away from Kai’s grasp. Faust falls, and lands in her shirt where it’s tucked into her pants.

She gets to experience for the first time the feeling of a snake slithering along her belly. It’s… very strange.

“Faust!” Asra chastises, probably a little too loudly. He reaches, as if he’s going to snatch the snake out of Kai’s oversized shirt, but immediately takes three steps back.

What Kai can see of his face is several shades darker than normal.

_Pretty!_ Faust exclaims.

“Yes she is but you shouldn’t crawl down her shirt!” he shouts, before abruptly turning around and staring, very deliberately, at the ceiling.

“What?” Julian yells from the other room. “Who’s in Kai’s shirt? Asra?”

“I’m not—it’s Faust!”

“Asra, get your snake out of Kai’s shirt this _instant_!”

_Fun!_

Kai—laughing at the sensation of Faust wriggling against her belly—reaches down her shirt and, as gently as possible, picks Faust up by the tail. She pulls the wriggling snake out of her shirt, but when she tries to hold Faust at arm’s length, she feels a tug at her neck.

Faust has the purple gem she’d taken from Asra’s shop between her teeth, the chain pulled taut between them. Faust wriggles with delight as she looks up at Kai, still clamped down on the gem.

_Asra, look! Pretty!_

“I’m good,” Asra says, still making a solid attempt at memorizing the ceiling.

“Wait,” Julian shouts. “Wait—Asra, _don’t_ get your snake out. Don’t even—you’d better not—Kai, _you_ get Asra’s snake out—”

“Will you _relax_?” she yells back, tugging lightly on Faust to try and get her to let go. “I have it—under— _shit_. Asra? I uh. I need help.”

Asra mutters something under his breath that Kai can’t hear. He tucks his scarf further up around his face, hesitates again, tucks his hat down further, and then turns around.

And he stops dead in his tracks at the sight of Kai, the snake, and the necklace.

His scarf is pushed up so high, and his hat shoved down so low, that she actually can’t even see his eyes. She _can_ see him tilt his head a little.

And then, he reaches up, and takes off his hat, and pulls down his scarf. His eyes are wide, his lips parted, and he looks down at the crystal with a warm expression.

She… remembers now that she technically _stole_ this.

“I—I didn’t—uh.”

He approaches her, now. And she can see his lips slowly curving up into a smile as he regards Faust, and the gem, and as Kai tries to stammer through an explanation about how she _has it in the first place…_

Asra tickles Faust’s jaw, and she drops the gem into his awaiting palm. She curls onto his wrist, radiating amusement and unabashed delight as she crawls up his arm and curls around his now-exposed neck.

Leaving Asra and Kai standing very, _very_ close. The gem in his palm, its chain around her neck.

She could step back, and it would fall. He could drop his palm, and it would fall.

But he only looks from the gem to her eyes, his own bright with wonder, and Kai finds she can’t look away.

“Sorry I took it,” she says, softly.

He beams down at her, cheeks dimpling.

“Can you tell me _why_?” he asks.

She wasn’t certain at the time. It had caught her eye out of the bunch, and she hadn’t thought much about it…

But now, standing very close to Asra, close enough to see his long, pale lashes and every tiny, wispy strand of his hair, she’s pretty sure it’s because the stone is the same colour as his eyes, and she had thought it delicate and beautiful.

“I… liked it,” she answers.

Taking off his hat earlier has messed up his hair a little. He looks almost roguish—younger. She can definitely picture him climbing up those handholds in the stone wall outside his shop—that mop of hair appearing over the top, catching the moonlight…

“May I?” he asks, lifting the crystal slightly.

She blinks away her daydream, and nods.

He slips the chain from her neck, and holds it in the air so the stone hovers above his palm. “When a little magic is channeled through them, crystals and stones can be used as meditation tools, or can hold charms, or spells, or simply provide benefits to their wearer based on their own natural properties. Do you know what this crystal is called, Kai?”

“No,” she answers, watching magic like moonlight begin to glow in his palm.

“Lepidolite. It is a stone of harmony. It is best for clearing one’s mind, for easing stress, and for encouraging calm and tranquility.”

His magic fades—and Kai thinks at first that nothing has changed, but the crystal seems to gleam a little brighter, now. As if it’s catching the light a little better.

Asra leans forward, and drops the chain around her neck once more. The pendant comes to a rest on her chest, and it feels lighter than it used to.

“ _Balance in all things_ ,” he tells her. “When you feel lost, or overwhelmed, or outside of yourself, meditate on those words, and that crystal. It can help you.”

She closes her hand around the crystal. It’s warm against her skin.

“Thank you,” she says. “I… I will.”

He’s still standing very close. Smiling down at her, as if he knows some amusing secret that she doesn’t. His tousled hair in his eyes.

“Kai,” Julian shouts from the prep room, “put your shirt back on, I’m coming out!”

Asra steps back, and tucks his scarf over Faust and his face. He picks his hat up off the floor, and shakes some dirt off of it, as Julian walks out of the prep room with a jar filled with a familiar dark liquid.

“Ah,” he says, glaring at Asra, “good, you’ve sorted the _snake_ out.”

Kai rolls her eyes.

“Here.” Julian deposits the jar in her outstretched hand. “Hopefully this one won’t make you as drowsy.”

“I’ll keep you updated,” she drawls, and tucks the jar into her bag. When Julian starts eyeing the stone hanging around her neck, she slips it into her shirt, and tries to avoid his questioning gaze.

When she looks back to Asra, he’s already slipping out the door. She barely catches a glimpse of his dark cloak before the door closes behind him, and she is once again alone in the clinic with Julian.

The doctor sighs, and grabs his own cloak from a chair he’d thrown it over. “Well then,” he says, offering Kai his arm. “Shall we?”

Kai ignores him. She picks Cinis up off the floor, and has him lie across her shoulders before walking straight to the door, and letting herself out of the clinic.

 

When Kai, Julian and Trevor arrive at the palace, they are immediately whisked off to dine with Lucio.

Well, Kai and Julian are expected to dine—Trevor has to stand at the back of Kai’s chair as if she’s going to bolt mid-meal, and she can practically hear the poor boy salivating at the sight of so much food, none of which he is allowed to eat.

Every single thing that is placed before Kai has been burnt beyond recognition.

She’s not sure who’s angrier about it—herself, or Julian, who by the fourth course is shaking with poorly-contained rage.

“Are you not hungry, little magician?” Lucio asks her, watching her with those plague-reddened eyes every time she takes a single, polite bite, and then puts her fork down. “Is the food not to your liking?”

Her mouth tastes like ash. It makes her head spin, but she takes a deep breath and thinks of the crystal, feels its warmth against her skin, and manages to stay present.

Does nothing for the pounding headache, though.

“Not used to so much food,” she replies, finally, through gritted teeth.

“ _My lord_ ,” someone closer to Lucio corrects her from behind his wine glass.

Kai glares at him, and keeps her mouth shut out of spite.

For his part, however, the count just waves his hand. “Valerius, you know the common rabble aren’t sophisticated enough for proper conversation. All the fine dining has utterly overwhelmed her. My dear Jules, you’ve been neglecting your assistant’s social education for far too long, I believe she’s a lost cause.”

Julian slams his napkin down on the table, and opens his mouth to say something stupid.

Kai kicks him as hard, and discreetly, as she can.

Julian’s mouth snaps shut, and he fumes for a minute, before taking a deep breath, smiling, and reaching for his wine glass.

“How strange,” he says, “all my _other_ patients find her manners impeccable.”

Lucio’s expression darkens, and the talons of his gold hand _click_ on the table, tearing into the cloth.

The courtiers look between Julian and the count uneasily, and a chill runs up Kai’s spine.

A guard enters the room from the side. He’s wearing the crimson and gold of Lucio’s Crown Guard, the highest ranking of the city guard and those closest to him.

“My lord,” the man says. “I offer my sincerest apologies.”

“What is it?” Lucio snarls, whirling out of his chair. His claws catch on the tablecloth, and it tears as he turns, taking several plates of food off the table with him.

Behind her, Trevor actually lets out a pained sound at the sight.

The Crown Guard is undeterred by Lucio’s display. He simply says, “Valdemar has requested your presence in regards to your current project. They insist that it is of the utmost importance.”

Kai glances at the empty chair next to Lucio, where a place has been set for a courtier who did not attend dinner. Every course has been brought out for them, and then promptly whisked away with all the other plates.

Lucio’s eyes brighten at the mention of the _project_. “Of course,” he says, suddenly delighted, and immediately begins to leave the room. “Tell me, has there been any progress? Is my Scourge ready?”

“I was only told to bring you, my lord,” the Crown Guard replies, before he and Lucio pass through the doorway and into the hall.

_Asra’s friend_ , Kai thinks— _knows_ it, without really understanding why. And in spite of what Asra told her, she tries to stand up and follow them. Absolutely would, were it not for Julian’s hand over hers, and the warning look he gives her.

“What a grand day!” Lucio crows from down the hall. “What a glorious, glorious day!”

“Well,” Julian says, tossing his napkin into the center of the table, “that’s that, then.”

With that, everyone else at the table simply gets up and leaves—aside from Procurator Volta, who immediately begins devouring food off every plate but her own, which has already been licked clean.

Kai and Julian remain in the room while everyone else leaves—and Trevor, after only a moment’s hesitation, immediately sits and start to eat from the closest plate of food, glancing up at Procurator Volta uneasily with every hasty handful he shoves into his mouth.

Volta, for her part, reaches for Kai’s plate. “Are you going to finish this delicious morsel?” she asks, as if suddenly remembering she has to ask before taking someone’s food.

“Be my guest?” Kai says, uneasily.

She’s barely finished before Volta has snatched the plate away.

When it becomes clear Volta is too occupied with the food to care, Kai turns and smacks the back of Julian’s head.

“Hey!”

“What were you thinking! We could have—”

“Could have _what_?” Julian hisses, jerking his head rather pointedly at Volta.

She glares up at him, and he down at her, until eventually Kai lets out a frustrated breath. “I’m going to bed,” she snaps, and shoves her chair back from the table.

Trevor looks up from his stolen plate of food with an utterly heartbroken expression.

“Oh,” she says, “well, I could—wait until you’ve—”

“I can escort you, Honoured Magician.”

Kai turns, and behind her hovers the old servant woman from Kai’s first night at the palace. She smiles, and taps her cane on the floor, her unseeing gaze falling somewhere past Kai’s shoulder. “If it so pleases you. The boy looks like he could use a good meal.”

Trevor grins sheepishly past a mouthful of food.

“My name is Serris,” the woman says as they walk. She has her arm looped through Kai’s, though Kai thinks the woman doesn’t seem to need any support or guidance as they make their way up servant stairs, and through back halls. “I was born in this palace. My mothers worked here together in the kitchens, and my father worked in the stables for Lord Lucio’s father.”

Kai doesn’t know where this is going, or where she’s being led. She nods as she listens, and when she remembers that Serris probably cannot see _well_ , if at all, she starts humming little affirmations at appropriate points instead.

“I remember Lucio as a boy,” Serris tells her. “Headstrong, sullen. Very angry, when things were taken from him. Cruel to whoever displeased him, which was everyone. He was no different as a young man, and he is no different still.”

Kai has… nothing to say to that.

“But oh, when my lady Nadia arrived in the city…” the old woman’s face lights up. “Oh, there was so much promise. Such a lady, with dreams of ruling a great city… only for Lucio to twist her, as he twists everything. She became meek, and withdrawn. Until the end—and I do not know what she planned, Magician, but I am afraid it was the end of her.”

A chill runs up Kai’s spine.

They step out into a hall, different than the one that leads to Kai’s room. There is very little red decoration at all—unadorned marble floors, no paintings on the walls. High ceilings, with elegant trim and fine woodwork, all washed white. All signs that this wing of the palace is well cared for, and cleaned, and meant for someone of very high status. But no signs that anyone lives here.

Serris pats Kai’s hand. “My lady cares not for Lucio’s colours, and I’ve had them all removed. She’s much calmer without them.”

_The dead countess_ , Kai nearly says. She swallows instead.

“What was she like?” Kai wonders. She feels she has to whisper, here. Like she might disturb someone, if she speaks too loudly.

“My lady?” Serris smiles fondly. “Warm and kind. Firm, when she needed to be. Uncertain of herself, and her path—as we all are, at times. And her husband used that against her, my poor lady. But I believe she was stronger than she thought—and I wish, deeply, that I could have seen her realise that for herself. Ah, here we are.”

Serris stops her at the grandest door in the hall. She reaches down to her belt, and pulls out the biggest, heaviest looking keyring Kai’s ever seen. She goes through them by feel, one by one, until finally she finds the one she’s looking for and unlocks the door.

“I believe my lady wishes you to relax,” Serris says, walking into the room without Kai’s aid. “It is sometimes hard to tell what she desires, these days, but I do try my best.”

Kai hovers, uncertainly, outside the door. She can see sheer curtains and the flicker of candles, and the scent of jasmine wafts from the room.

Cinis pokes his head out of her bag, and chitters curiously. Over their newly repaired connection, she can feel that he wants to go in, and that he is not afraid.

Few things in this world are as brave as a very small cat, Kai thinks to herself. She takes a deep breath and enters the room.

She parts the curtains and looks around her. Serris is opening a set of ornate shutters, and letting moonlight and a cool night breeze pour into the room. In the middle of the room is a grand, ornate bath, bigger than Kai’s ever even imagined, set into the very floor. Steam rises off it in great spiralling curls, and a number of fresh flowers float in the water—jasmine, lotus, and others Kai has never seen. There are bottles of oils on a provided tray, and plenty of towels and cushions for lounging on. There is another bottle of the wine from the previous evening on ice, and a changing screen with a cobalt blue bathrobe hanging over it. A rack of clothing has been rolled in—all of it very fine, and looking to be about Kai’s size.

By the time Kai has finished standing in the room and staring at everything, another servant arrives with a large tray of food, covered with a silver dish. It takes Kai a second to realise that this person is one of the kitchen staff, as their uniform is different and covered in flour.

“On behalf of the kitchen, I would like to apologize for the food you received at dinner,” they say. “We hope you enjoy this, instead. Just, ah… don’t tell the count.”

Kai blinks at them. “Uh,” she says. “Thanks?”

They bow a little, and then put the tray near the water. They bow again, and then hurry out as quickly as possible.

Serris isn’t far behind them. She pauses at the doors, one hand on each handle. “There is a bell you may ring should you require anything at all, Honoured Magician,” she says, bowing as she pulls the doors closed.

Leaving Kai alone in the room with a giant bath, a cat, and very possibly a ghost.

Cinis paws at one of the flowers floating in the water, his tail swishing back and forth with curiosity.

Kai lets out a sigh. She goes to the open windows, and finds an uninterrupted view of the palace’s sprawling grounds—there’s not even a balcony to go out on, just a sheer drop to the ground outside.

Under the silver dome, she finds more spiced swordfish, some bread and butter, and a bowl of fish trim for Cinis, cooked in some sort of broth that smells like liver. He tucks into his food with a pleased little meow, and Kai washes the ashen taste from earlier out of her mouth with the wine before tucking in.

There is a slice of cake on the side. Kai eats it after the rest of her meal, while Cinis licks the last drops of sauce from her plate. It is airy, and sweet, and easily the most decadent thing Kai has ever eaten.

She makes it last as long as possible, and nearly cries when she takes the last bite.

After she and Kai have eaten, Kai pours herself another glass of wine and slips out of her (frankly, filthy) clothing. She drops it on the floor behind the changing screen, but keeps Asra’s pendant on.

Cinis sits on the windowsill and watches the garden with wide, attentive eyes while Kai sticks one toe in the pool. It’s… warm.

She’s never had a warm bath before.

She steps in—and it takes some convincing, as it’s _hot_ on her legs—eventually gets herself settled in the absurdly large bath. The heat sinks through her skin and into her muscles, and she hadn’t realised they were _aching_ so much until just this moment. She just… soaks a moment, before she crosses to the tray of oils, and she finds on it an elegant comb, and a few pumice stones.

She takes her time, scrubbing at every part of her with the stone, watching with wonder as the dirt caked on from the last few days begins to cloud the water of the bath. She combs out the gnarls in her curls until her arms hurt, and then a little longer still, and pops open every bottle and sniffs them all. There is a jar filled with a rapidly-melting white mass, next to all this heat, labelled _coconut_ , and it smells… distantly familiar. Like a dream she can’t quite remember.

She rubs it through her hair, and then on her knees, elbows and feet for good measure.

When she has scrubbed herself clean, she throws on the blue bathrobe and browses through the rack of clothing. Her hair is still dripping wet, though, so she joins Cinis at the window a while, watching the trees below sway in the breeze.

After a while, she _feels_ more than _hears_ movement behind her. She reaches up and holds the lepidolite, focusing, and she can feel that movement a little stronger.

She turns, and there is nothing there.

She clears her throat. “Countess?” she asks, softly.

One of the candles flickers strangely. Kai focuses her gaze directly above it, but sees nothing.

When nothing else happens, Kai bows a little—honestly not sure how deep she’s supposed to go, and feeling a little silly. “Thank you, my lady, for letting me use your bath. And the food. And the robe. And the clothes…”

She tapers off. There’s still no response.

Kai finds her gaze drawn to the bag she took from Asra’s place, on the floor by the cushions.

She rubs the lepidolite with her thumb, thoughtfully.

Sitting on the cushions, Kai gives herself a moment to get settled. Then she reaches into the bag and takes out the book, and then the tarot cards. They seem to hum in her palm, as if they are excited.

Yep. Nothing weird about _that_.

She flips open the book. But she finds it’s not the instructions she is looking for, or the description of the cards and their meanings. Instead, her gaze lingers on the message left by Asra on the first page. She wonders who that someone was, and why he left her the cards. And why there were so many clothes in the drawers of that shop that would not fit him, but only one bed.

She closes the book and puts it aside. She takes the cards out of their leather pouch, and holds them in her palm a moment.

“Why don’t we give this a try,” she says, to no one in particular.

Cinis jumps down from the window, and curls up on her lap.

She shuffles the cards, and cuts the deck. She puts the deck on the floor and waits, though she’s not sure for what. And then she reaches over and draws a single card from the top of the deck, and flips it over.

A red-eyed owl stares up at her; the High Priestess.

Kai stares down at the card thoughtfully. She reaches up and touches the crystal around her neck again, thinking on Asra’s words— _balance_ —and the book. The High Priestess is… a guardian, she thinks. Something to do with wisdom, with the subconscious mind…

Out of the corner of her eye, Kai sees one of the sheer curtains move.

_Balance in all things_ , Asra had said.

The card stares up at her, and Kai closes her eyes.

For a moment, she _sees_ something, without seeing it. Or hears it, maybe—the rush of wind in her ears, the flapping of great, mighty wings in the night.

_If you only open your eyes,_ a voice tells her, _you will see._

Kai does.

Before her, sitting on one of the cushions opposite her, is a tall woman with purple hair and red eyes. She wears lavender clothing, and the finest jewellery Kai has ever seen. She is leaning forward, trying to see the card in Kai’s hand.

Kai can see right through her, to the wall behind her.

“Holy shit,” Kai says.

The woman blinks. She looks up and meets Kai’s gaze, her red eyes wide with surprise.

“You can see me?” the ghost of the countess Nadia asks. She leans forward, and her whole face slowly lights up as a delighted smile spreads across it. “You can _hear_ me?”

“Holy shit,” Kai says again. “I— _yes_. I can.”

The countess grins.

 


	7. The Hermit I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you are struggling to connect more deeply with your spiritual self, the Hermit reversed encourages you to create more time and space so that you can meditate and reflect on your spiritual self… The Hermit asks you to search deep within your soul to help you find your way again and to focus on rebuilding yourself on a spiritual level. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/hermit/)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

Early the next morning, Kai sits in her room and pulls out every article of clothing she stole from Asra’s shop.

“I believe I have provided you with an ample choice of outfits,” Nadia says. She’s sitting on the bed, braiding her hair into a single, ornate coil at the top of her head. “I assure you, all of them suit you perfectly.”

Kai can’t help but blush a little under the countess’s intense gaze. She’s the most beautiful woman Kai has ever met, and for a ghost who no one else can see, she seems to be fond of dropping casual compliments whenever she can.

“They’re all beautiful,” Kai agrees. “But they’ll get me mugged the minute I step out into the street.”

Nadia sighs, and makes a face that Kai has already started calling her “ugh” face. Not out loud, she’s not _that_ brave. “I wish someone could tell me _why_ I stayed in this miserable city in the first place,” she complains, mostly to herself.

Last night, Nadia had explained the loss of all her memories since her arrival in Vesuvia. She had been sympathetic, but certainly not _impressed_ to learn that Kai’s memories only stretched back a year.

“Of course,” she had complained, “the only person who can see me is just as in the dark about this whole situation as I am.”

Now, Nadia shakes her head. “My pride is to blame, I imagine,” she says, before sitting properly and looking down at the clothes Kai has arranged on the floor. “Some of these are quite lovely, Kai. Where did you say you got them?”

“Asra’s shop,” she answers.

“The same Asra who supposedly murdered me?”

“He didn’t,” Kai replies with a surprising certainty.

“Hm. Did he tell you as much?”

Kai watches Cinis inspect the closest shirt to him with great scrutiny, his ears flat against his skull. “Yes. And he said he was going to find out who did.”

Nadia, for her part, doesn’t look impressed. She does get off the bed, however, and step carefully between the laid out shirts and pants, examining each with a careful eye as she passes. “What does this Asra look like?” Nadia wonders.

“Sorry?”

“Is he about your height? Your build? These all look like they would fit you.”

“He’s… taller,” she admits, shifting her weight a little. “These… these wouldn’t fit him.”

Nadia gives Kai a significant look. And then she turns, and sees the _no_ pile, laid out over the back of a chair—she goes to it immediately, and tries to pick it up but her hands go right through the chair.

She lets out a frustrated breath. After a moment, she simply points to one of the outfits on the chair. “Kai, if you would be so kind as to hold this one up for me? I’d like to see it.”

Kai uncrosses her legs and joins Nadia by the chair immediately. Kai had stayed up nearly the whole night with Nadia, learning as much as they could from one another; Kai has learned that Nadia cannot interact with solid objects during the day, though flame sometimes flickers and water usually ripples when she passes through it. A light enough object, such as a curtain, might be jostled by her passing, but for the most part she has no interaction with the world.

If an object is magical, or has been around enough magic, Nadia can sometimes pick it up, but usually drops it after a short period of time. She’s not certain how long, because Lucio had most anything magical in the palace burned. At night, she can touch and pick up most anything—but she needs to concentrate to do so, and often breaks whatever she tries to handle.

Sometimes, people can hear a little of what she tries to tell them at night—some are better than others at it, though no one has yet been able converse with her as she has with Kai.

In return, she learned the state of the city from Kai—she had gathered as much as she could from overhearing conversations among the palace staff, but Kai’s unique position in Julian’s plague clinic offers new insights that Nadia hadn’t known, and being able to ask questions has allowed Nadia to clear up a few of her own suspicions.

Kai sorts through the clothes on the chair until she finds the dress in question. Kai’s not entirely sure how it wound up in the bag, but she holds it up dutifully for Nadia regardless. It’s a deep, vibrant blue, and it doesn’t really _have_ a back. It must have been stuffed up in with all the shirts, and Kai had grabbed it in haste.

Nadia’s eyes light up when Kai holds it up for her. “Lovely,” Nadia says. “A little simple, but—let me see the back.”

Kai turns it around, obligingly. Nadia leans in close to examine the amber beads woven into the hem, going all the way down the back. “I do believe it’s your colour, Kai.”

“What did we just say about me getting mugged?”

“I’m hardly suggesting you wear it in the _street_ ,” Nadia amends, “but… if you have the time, I would like you see _you_ in it.”

Nadia looks so _earnest_. And… well, Kai can’t imagine it’s very exciting, being unable to speak to anyone all day for a year.

She obliges. There’s no changing screen, so she just strips down in front of Nadia, who doesn’t seem to care all that much, but she does turn her back to hide her own embarrassment.

“Your tattoos are lovely,” Nadia says. “I… may have seen them in the bath, as well.”

Kai glances over her shoulder as she steps into the dress. Nadia is too busy staring at Kai’s lower back, her gaze wandering down, to notice.

“Do you always invite guests to your private baths to spy on them?”

Nadia’s gaze snaps up to Kai’s—and her cheeks darken a little, confirming that ghosts can, in fact, blush. “Well, I didn’t think you’d be able to _see_ me by the end of it.”

Kai can’t help a smile. She pulls the dress up, and then takes its straps and ties them about her neck. She turns, and Nadia’s expression turns from chastised to delighted in the span of a heartbeat.

“It’s _lovely_.” Nadia approaches, looking Kai up and down. “I was right, the colour _does_ suit you—turn for me? I’d like to see all that lovely detail on the back.”

Kai obeys, cheeks growing warm under Nadia’s heated gaze.

A moment later, Nadia directs her to the full-length mirror at the other end of the room. “Come take a look at yourself,” she says, and Kai keeps looking out the window at the rising sun, but Nadia is _so_ eager, it’s hard to disappoint her.

In the mirror, Kai’s reflection stares back at her, wearing a scandalous blue dress that is slightly too big for her. It falls slightly past her knees, and is sleeveless, exposing the sprawling black tattoo that starts on her left arm, travels over her shoulder, and then down her back.

The mirror only shows the room behind her—not the woman who stands just behind her. Kai can feel Nadia drawing closer by the way the hair on the back of her neck stands on end—the tiny hairs all over her skin rising, as Kai glances down and sees Nadia’s fingertips hover just above the tattoo on Kai’s shoulder.

“Beautiful,” Nadia says, softly.

Kai swallows.

“I don’t suppose you remember getting them?”

Kai shakes her head. “Jul—Doctor Devorak says that he’s seen ones like them before. That he once travelled to a chain of islands in northern seas, and the people there had tattoos like these.”

“Fascinating,” Nadia says. “They must have been very painful.”

She exhales. “I don’t remember.”

Nadia hums thoughtfully. The electric _almost-_ touch of her hands moves lower, and Kai looks into the mirror and sees gooseflesh prickling all along her skin.

She blinks, and her vision blurs. She blinks again, and the mirror reflects not the guest room, but the bedroom in Asra’s shop. With the dresser, the jewellery box left open—the small bed, a few dresses laid out on it.

And over her shoulder, Asra stands, his hand tracing the familiar lines of the tattoos on her lower back, his head bent, his lips hovering just above her neck, and his beautiful eyes watching her reflection, pupils blown wide.

“Kai?” Nadia calls gently, sounding worried.

She gasps. The vision is gone, the mirror’s reflection showing only her, too skinny for the dress she’s wearing, and tattoos that mean something but she doesn’t know _what_ —

She whirls from the mirror, reaching for the knot behind her neck. She’s breathing heavily, she notices, as if distantly, and panic starts to rise in her chest— _is there fire, is there fire—_

Cinis meows, and she stumbles as he tries to rub himself against her legs.

“Kai,” Nadia calls again. “Kai, what’s the matter?”

She gets the dress off. The air in the room is cold, and she does not smell smoke. She feels at her nose, but there is no blood. She shakes her head, and grabs for the stone hanging about her neck.

_Balance_ , Asra had said. _Balance, in all things._

But she can’t focus on that. Instead her mind is racing— _I would never hurt you_ , he said, that first meeting in the clinic. _Have you always been so clumsy?_

Someone gave him the tarot book.

His writing does not match any of the labels in the shop.

Why does she _remember wearing that dress—_

“Kai!” Nadia calls, _firmly_. Kai blinks, and Nadia is right in front of her—her ghost hands on Kai’s shoulders, her touch electric, and she looks right into Kai’s eyes, her own wide with concern. “Kai, _breathe_. Listen to me—breathe with me. Nothing’s wrong. You’re safe. Alright?”

“Is there fire,” Kai blurts, her voice shaking. “Is there—did I—”

“Nothing’s on fire,” Nadia says, her voice low and soothing. “It’s alright.”

Cinis rubs himself against her legs, purring as loud as he can. It feels like he’s _screaming_ comfort through her bond, or something that could almost be words, and if she just listened closer she could make them out…

But her own thoughts are scattered, like the frantic beating of her heart.

 

Nadia and Cinis sit with her until she’s calmed, and Kai expects the memory to fade or vanish entirely from her mind as they usually do, but…

Eventually, the sun rises high enough to light up the room, and she knows she can’t wait any longer so Nadia resumes the task of selecting an outfit. But Kai still sits on the bed, looking at the dress in her hands and… wondering what it feels like, for someone to kiss her neck.

Maybe… maybe not just _someone._

“This shirt,” Nadia says, jolting Kai out of her thoughts. She is pointing to a loose-fitting white shirt with delicate, and very _expensive_ looking lacework along the hem and the sleeves.

“I’m going to get mugged wearing that,” Kai says, exasperated.

Nadia gives her a _look_.

“You are being followed by the city guard at all times,” she says, “and the entire city knows you are a magician, looking for the most dangerous magician of our time?”

“He’s not dangerous,” Kai grumbles.

Nadia’s eyebrows rise even higher.

“Okay, fine.” She gets up off the bed, and shoves the shirt over her head. It falls off her shoulders, and she tries to yank it back subconsciously at first, but it’s… very soft. As soft as Asra’s clothing felt, that night she ran from the palace. And it should smell stale or musty, from being in the drawer (and then her bag) for so long, but it smells… nice. Like the ocean, like sweet flowers she’s never smelled before but she could swear she has…

A white flower—or, half a flower. Soft on her hands, an ocean breeze tugging at her hair.

“And these trousers,” Nadia says, actually bending over as if she can pick them up. She seems to remember that she _can’t_ , halfway through, and lets out a frustrated breath.

The trousers in question are grey, and nondescript. Kai hurriedly tucks the hem of her shirt into them to hide the lace, as Nadia moves over to the rack of clothing wheeled over from the baths.

“Nadia—”

“And this,” she says, indicating a cerulean vest, longer in the front than in the back.

“I can’t wear _that_ ,” she insists. “Nadia, that must have cost a fortune! The buttons, those are…”

“Mother of pearl,” Nadia says impatiently. “And we have _discussed_ this. Kai, if you are to be wandering the streets looking for my murderer—or whatever it is you’re actually doing out there—then you will _look the part_.”

“Part?” Kai echoes, wide-eyed. “What part?”

At that moment, there is a knock at the door, and then the sound of a key scraping in the lock.

Serris enters, with Trevor on her heels. He carries a heavy-looking tray of food, covered with a silver dish.

“My lady has not been so active since she was alive!” Serris exclaims as she breezes into the room.

Kai scrambles to snatch the clothes off the floor before Serris can snag her cane on any of them.

“Oh, young magician, I don’t know what spell you’ve worked, but I don’t think I’ve felt my lady’s presence more keenly than I do right this instant.”

Trevor stands in the doorway and shifts on his feet. “Are we uh, talking about the Ghost That Definitely Doesn’t Exist?”

Kai, shoving the clothes in her bag, looks curiously at him. “What do you mean by that?”

His gaze fixes on Kai’s hand, shoving five shirts at once into a bag that does not grow in size no matter how much she stuffs in it. “Oh, you know,” he says, trying to sound casual, but his voice keeps rising in pitch. “The Ghost that they sit you down in training and tell you isn’t real, and you’ll be fired if you talk about it.”

“I’ll show _him_ who’s real,” Nadia says with narrowed eyes.

“Possibly _set_ on fire,” Trevor continues, “I mean, I don’t think the count knows those are two different things…”

“Come and eat your breakfast, son,” Serris says, tapping the leg of the table with her cane. “My lady’s magician must be famished, and I’m certain she has a busy day ahead of her.”

Kai can’t help a suspicious glance over at Nadia.

The lady in question looks remarkably _smug_.

With a sigh, Kai tugs the vest off the rack and then shoves it on.

“Ah! And this scarf,” Nadia adds, waving her hand through a pale yellow scarf that she tries to pick up off the floor. “Around your waist. You’ll look _dashing_.”

Kai very nearly says, _I don’t want to look dashing I want to not get mugged_ , but she bites her tongue.

While she finishes getting dressed, Trevor sets down their breakfast and lifts the lid. There is fresh bread, yellow butter, eggs and fruit and brightly coloured preserves alongside yogurt, and fresh-cooked sausages that smell of Prakran spices. And a bowl of fish scraps for Cinis, who looks about to jump onto the table to get to it.

Trevor notices, and puts the bowl on the floor for the cat. “Here you go, little—ah!” He jerks back his hand just in time to avoid a swipe from Cinis.

“I trust you’ll make sure she eats her fill, young man,” Serris says, reaching into her pocket. “But for now— _there_ it is. I believe my lady would like you to have a token of her favour.”

“Just to be _clear_ ,” Trevor says as Serris pulls a necklace out of her pocket. “We are talking about the ghost we are _not supposed to be talking about_ , because it _definitely does not exist_. The ghost that if the count overhears us talking about, he will definitely skin us alive. That ghost.”

Serris ignores him, gesturing for Kai to come near. Kai obeys, and then bows a little so the woman can lift the necklace over her head.

“There,” she says, beaming as if she can see it. “Now everyone will know the Countess of Vesuvia has blessed you on your journey.”

“I don’t know about _blessed_ ,” Nadia says, clearly embarrassed.

Kai looks down at the necklace—and she reaches up to touch the single, flawless heart-shaped emerald hanging from it. It catches the sunlight, casting little green lights about the room.

“It’s beautiful,” Kai says nervously. “I—thank you.”

“Thank my lady,” Serris says, before turning on her heel and walking out the door. She pauses and says, over her shoulder, “Good luck, Magician,” before closing the door behind her.

Kai regards the emerald a moment longer, running her thumb over its many-faceted surface. Something about it feels… very similar to the lepidolite that Asra charmed for her. Warm, and catching a little more shine than the light from the window should allow.

“Yeah,” Trevor says with a sigh, interrupting her thoughts. He gives her one look up and down, and shakes his head. “Can you maybe… change? We’ll get mugged if you wear that.”

Nadia throws her hands up in the air. “Unbelievable!” she exclaims.

Kai almost laughs at that—she tries to cover it up with a cough, but it comes out as an undignified snort.

Trevor looks warily between Kai and what she supposes is, to him, the empty patch of air she keeps looking at for no reason, before stabbing a fork into one of the sausages on the plate and stuffing it in his mouth.

 

Nadia can only follow them as far as the palace gates—and the farther they get from the palace, the more visibly agitated she becomes.

“You’ll come back, yes?” she asks.

“Of course I’m coming back,” Kai answers—and she tries to do it under her breath, but the extra guards assigned to her today give her odd looks over their shoulders as they lead her through the hall.

Nadia laughs uneasily, one of her hands toying with the neckline of her dress. “Yes, of course, you need to help the magician’s friend…”

“I want to help you, too.” Kai stands a little taller as she walks, and the guards grow _visibly_ uncomfortable, as she says, “Nadia, I’m not going to abandon you. Okay?”

The countess’s shoulders relax. She reaches over and rests her hand on Kai’s shoulder, where Kai can only feel a weightless, electric charge.

“Thank you,” Nadia says. “I… thank you, Kai.”

“Miss Kai,” Trevor says as he walks by her side. “ _Please_ stop talking to yourself.”

He’s giving her a significant look, but she only scowls back at him in return.

Kai watches out the barred window of the carriage as it rattles away—long after Nadia’s spectral form fades into the distance, until Kai can no longer make out the palace gates through the smoke in the air.

“Are you _trying_ to get yourself killed?” Trevor hisses, when he seems unable to hold it in any longer. He’s riding in the carriage with her today—ostensibly for extra security, but Kai’s pretty sure it’s because he doesn’t know how to ride a horse.

She tugs at the chain on the emerald necklace. “Why?”

“The count _loses his mind_ if someone so much as _mentions_ the palace ghost.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Like how?”

Trevor gestures vaguely in the air. “I don’t actually know. But, last night was the closest I have _ever_ been to the count, and I kind of wanted to run screaming the whole time. And he wasn’t even mad at anything! So if literally everyone in the palace is too scared to bring up the fact that his _dead wife_ is wandering the halls at night, maybe you should be, too.”

“She wanders the halls in the day, too,” Kai quips.

Trevor grits his teeth. “Not. Helping.”

But she frowns—and leans forward in her seat, rubbing the emerald with her thumb. “ _Why_ , though?”

“I thought _that_ was obvious, the whole flippant attitude about your impending—”

“Not _that_!” She rolls her eyes. “I _meant_ , why would Lucio care if the palace was haunted?”

Trevor tilts his head slightly at her. “You are expecting literally anything Count Lucio does to make sense,” he says, “and that is probably your first mistake.”

Kai sighs, and slumps back in her seat. “Forget it.”

“I mean—I guess you’re right, because wouldn’t that give him more fuel for his crazy anti-magic crusade? Like, ‘oh my poor long-suffering wife, doomed to wander these really tacky halls for the rest of time…’ Something like that.”

Kai can’t help a laugh. “That was a _terrible_ Lucio impression.”

“Oh, like you can do better?”

“Not at all.” Kai taps the surface of the emerald thoughtfully. “I don’t know anything about ghosts, but I’m guessing you need a magician to help them pass on. So, if Lucio knows about the ghost, and hates that she’s there, then why execute every magician who can help?”

“I thought it was like, unfinished business that kept them here? Did uh,” he pauses to glance around, as if someone might somehow listen in. “Did the ghost tell you anything? Like, is she waiting for her murder to be avenged, or whatever?”

“ _She_ doesn’t even know why she’s still here. She doesn’t remember anything since arriving in Vesuvia.”

Trevor hums thoughtfully. “Well, that is the exact opposite problem of every ghost story I’ve ever heard. Are you sure she’s a ghost and not like, you slowly going crazy because Lucio’s been poisoning your food?”

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

“I’m serious! Am I going to start seeing her, too? Or maybe my Great Aunt Maude? I can almost smell her dumplings now…”

Trevor’s company makes the long carriage ride seem… significantly less tedious, than previous days. He actually pulls a long string out of his pocket for Cinis to play with, and tries to bribe the cat to allow a few pets with some dry cookies, but Cinis turns up his nose at all of them. Kai asks about his sister, and she receives a stellar, if somewhat teary eyed, report of her health.

“And she’s back to eating solid foods, Miss Kai,” he finishes, beaming. “And—and Miss Portia promised me she’d get some of those plums you sent her way! They’re her favourite, you know.”

Kai glances out the window as the carriage begins to slow. “You can give her as many you can carry after today,” Kai says, ushering Cinis into her bag.

For the first time, a crowd has gathered in the streets that surround Asra’s shop. They are about a block away from the shop, but the carriage has slowed simply because of the mass of _people_ in the way.

She watches as her escort does their best to move the crowd—on horses, with spears, they seem to be having the most effect, while guards on foot who must have been here before struggle to make any progress at all.

“What…” Kai wonders, peering through the bars.

“Magician!” someone shouts. “I see her! There she is!”

The crowd surges towards the carriage, and people start shouting.

“My wife is pregnant,” someone shouts, “she’s sick every morning—”

“The nightmares won’t stop, please—”

“They burned all our nets, we’re going to starve—”

“Get your witchcraft out of our city you—”

Kai jerks back from the window as a thrown bottle shatters on the carriage. The individual voices become indistinguishable from one another, then, and a few more bottles shatter on the carriage, no shards or their contents getting in the window. Kai can hear the guards shouting, and she hears one gunshot as the captain fires his pistol.

Into the air, she hopes.

“It’s alright, Miss Kai,” Trevor says. He’s leaning forward and his hand is on her knee, but his other hand is on his sword. Does he even know how to use it? “We’ll protect you.”

The air smells like smoke. Cinis squirms in her bag and growls as loud as he can.

Kai pulls the lepidolite out from under her shirt, and clutches it as she closes her eyes and _breathes_.

Eventually, they break through the mob. The _sound_ of the mob does not dim, but the carriage slows to a stop, and the captain yanks open the door.

His pistol is in his hand, and he barely looks at her as he gestures for her to get out.

Trevor helps Kai out of the carriage, and she can’t help but look back at the crowd.

A large number of city guards are maintaining a perimeter. She can see more than one person being arrested, while more guards shove makeshift wooden barriers in place to deter the crowd from breaking through.

Some people point and shout when they see her. She cannot tell if they are asking for help, or cursing her and her magic.

“I’ll meet you in the shop as soon as I can get away,” Trevor whispers in her ear. “Don’t worry about the crowd. _Go._ ”

His hand on her arm is shaking. He’s seventeen, she remembers, and takes a deep breath before she nods, only once.

The short distance from the carriage to the front door of the shop feels far, far longer than the twenty or so steps she actually takes. The moment the door is unlocked (with the key she pretends she had stolen from inside), she hurries inside, heart racing in her chest.

She slams it shut—and the smell of smoke in the air dies, all sounds from outside vanish entirely. Everything is quiet, and still, and she slumps against the door, and tries to catch her breath as Cinis struggles his way out of her bag.

She’s still leaning against the door, her cat pawing at her leg and _meowing_ , when she hears footsteps rushing down the stairs.

She looks up in time to see Asra hovering on the final step—looking as if he wants to rush to her, but is holding himself back. He’s not wearing his disguise--just that white shirt that doesn’t fit him, his brown slacks, and a pink sash. Faust is around his shoulders, vibrating with worry and relief.

_Kai!_ the snake calls, _Safe!_

Cinis chirps with worry.

Asra’s shoulders slump with relief. “You got through,” he says, “I thought for a minute there…”

He shakes his head. “Come in,” he says, finally stepping off the last stair and going to her. “I’ve made tea—we have a few minutes, you can rest upstairs.”

Kai lets Asra lead her through the shop, one of his hands at the curve of her back. His touch feels… _warm,_ and the tight quarters mean he has to walk very close to her, in order to steady her as he heads for the stairs.

“I was about to go out there and help you,” Asra says. “That crowd is… I know things are bad here, but I didn’t expect…”

She feels his breath on her ear, and sees all over again the mirror; herself in that dress, and Asra’s lips _very nearly_ brushing the skin of her neck.

She shivers.

“Are you cold? It’s warmer upstairs, I’ve got your—a shawl hanging by the stove for you, the salamander’s already warming it.”

_Your shawl_. She tries to focus on breathing, and on the gemstone that she’s still clutching, but it’s so hard to think about _balance_ with his hand on her back, his breath in her ear, and a frantic kind of worry on the edge of every word he speaks.

“Asra,” she says.

“Hang on—here we are.” They reach the top of the stairs, and he leads her to the tiny kitchen. The shawl she’d borrowed the last time she was here is, indeed, hanging near the stove. He leaves her long enough to grab it off the wall, and then he wraps her in it.

It’s warm—and his hands grip her shoulders, making her warmer still.

“There,” he says. “There you go. Now you can—now you can just sit, and breathe, and we’ll wait for—”

She closes her eyes. “Asra.”

“—for Trevor to show up, and then we can be on our way—”

“ _Asra_.”

His breath hitches, and he stills.

She opens her eyes, and he is watching her, wide-eyed, his lips slightly parted.

She takes a deep breath. “One year ago,” she says, looking down at her hands, “I lost my memories. All of them.”

Asra says nothing in reply.

Kai worries the lepidolite between her fingers for a moment, gathering her courage, before looking up at Asra and saying, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

He doesn’t move. He stares at her, with a look in his eye that speaks, just for half a heartbeat, of an overwhelming _hope._ Then he blinks, and it vanishes.

“Yes,” he answers, so softly she hardly hears it.

“How close were we?”

He exhales, and it sounds nearly like a sob. “Kai,” he says.

“Asra.”

His face twists. “I can’t—”

“Can’t what? Can’t _tell_ me?” He does not reply, and she shoves his arm off her shoulders. “Don’t I—don’t I have a right to know, Asra? What happened to me? Who I am? Who we _were_ —”

“Kai,” he says, “Kai, listen to me—“

“Who _are_ you?” she asks. “Who are you to _me_? Why—why do the clothes here fit me, and why doesn’t your writing match the labels on the bottles downstairs, and why can I hear your snake when no one else can?”

“I can’t _tell_ you,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m _sorry_ , Kai.”

She shoves the shawl off her left shoulder, dragging her shirt down with it and exposing her tattoos. “What do these mean?” she demands, her vision going blurry with hot, angry tears of her own. “Where did I get them? Why do I—why do I remember you—”

Her throat closes up.

His eyes grow wide.

She tries to breathe. Her chest feels _tight_.

There are tears tracking down his cheeks—and down hers, in kind. Just as she moves to wipe at her eyes, angrily, Asra steps forward and reaches for her.

His hand cups her face, and his thumb brushes away some of her tears.

Her palm comes to rest on his chest, at the v of his undone shirt, her fingers brushing against soft, warm skin.

“What do you remember?” he asks, his voice thick, his eyes still impossibly wide.

She glances down at his lips.

It’s hard to say who moves first; if she stands a little taller, or he starts to lean down, and who moves to meet the other halfway.

All she knows is, her eyes flutter closed, and she feels his breath on her skin as his lips brush hers. Tentative, hesitant—and she’s never kissed anyone before, at least not that she remembers, but it seems like the most natural thing in the world to lean up into him. To press when he starts to pull away. For her fingers to curl against the skin on his chest, for her other hand to reach for his waist, to keep him near, tasting the salt of his tears as they run down his face.

He makes a sound that is either a sob or a laugh—or both—and his lips slide over hers, the hand on her face moves to the back of her neck, his other to her lower back.

Everywhere he touches her, there is warmth. A languid, slow-growing heat—not the kind that makes her panic or think of flame, but of a warm hearth, a body pressed next to hers, where she wants it. Of closeness, of being needed.

Of never letting go.

When they part, reluctantly, for air, Asra doesn’t go far. He rests his forehead against hers, a moment, while he catches his breath. When he opens his eyes again, he only does so to look down at her with an expression filled with wonder.

“Have we done that before?” Kai whispers, breathless.

Asra laughs, his cheeks dimpling.

_Beautiful_ , she thinks.

Behind Asra, someone clears their throat.

Asra turns without letting go of Kai, and she leans a little to look past his shoulder and see Trevor, standing at the top of the stairs. His face is nearly as red as a pomegranate.

“Should I…” He gestures over his shoulder with his thumb. “Do you two uh, need a moment?”

Asra only laughs again. He bends and kisses Kai’s forehead, and then leaves her to go back to the kitchen. “That was quick,” he says, taking a third cup from the cabinet. “What excuse did you use to get away?”

“Had to piss.”

Asra rolls his eyes. “How _creative_.”

“N-not really. Um. You have a uh, bucket or something?”

Kai can’t help a laugh.

Asra watches her with a warm smile for a moment, before pouring the tea. “There’s a wash closet off the stairs, close to the garden door.”

“A whole closet? Fancy!” Trevor whistles, and then immediately races down the stairs.

“Wash your hands after!” Asra calls.

The slam of a door is his only answer.

Asra shakes his head as he brings Kai her tea. “Unfortunately,” he says, “that doesn’t give us a lot of time to… talk.”

_Kiss!_ Faust suggests from where she hangs off a cabinet door, and Asra blushes.

Cinis radiates displeasure from his perch on the back of the couch. Asra ignores him and sits down, so Kai follows suit. Cinis immediately retreats behind her shoulder, where he can glare at Asra from relative safety.

Asra stares into his cup for a while, his expression serious as he mulls over his words.

Kai tucks her shawl higher up over her shoulders as she waits. She has a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t know which one to ask first.

After a while, he finally says, “I didn’t tell you at first because… Lucio wants me, for whatever reason, and it can’t be good. I thought, maybe, if you didn’t know about our past, you’d be safe from him.”

“He’d already met me,” Kai says. “He came to the clinic looking for Julian, and found me instead. You showed up about ten minutes after him.”

Asra laughs, with that familiar dark edge he reserves only for the count. “I… don’t think it would have ended well, if I had seen him threatening you.”

“Better for the city, maybe,” she says.

He smiles, finally looking up at her with wonder in his eyes. “So much about you hasn’t changed at all,” he says, his eyes crinkling. “And so much _has_ , but… it suits you.”

Her face feels warm. She sips her tea, embarrassed.

“Ilya told me about your… episodes.”

She looks down at her cup and avoids his gaze. She’d almost forgotten that he’d been there. That he had seen her, utterly blank, staring off into nothing...

“I think,” Asra says, clearly choosing his words carefully, “that they might be related to your memories. To… what happened to you, a year ago.”

She glances up at him. He’s not looking at her—he’s staring off into the distance. Towards the sea, she thinks, though there’s no window in that direction in this house. Even if there was, he wouldn’t be able to see it.

She thinks back to this morning—Nadia’s ghostly touch on her back, that dress in the mirror—with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Because… he’s right, isn’t he?

He closes his eyes, and lets out a breath. “I want you to remember, Kai,” he says. “So, _so_ badly. But not if it’s going to hurt you like that in the process.”

She clutches her teacup. _I don’t care_ , she wants to say, but she thinks of poor Trevor, his hand burnt trying to help her. Of how worried Julian is, every time it takes her longer and longer to snap out of it.

“This helps,” she says, her voice thick. She reaches down and holds the lepidolite, and feels its subtle warmth spread from her fingers to her heart. “A bit. Better than anything else has, really. So… thank you.”

Asra puts his cup aside. He leans towards her, and wraps his hands around hers, the lepidolite in the center of it all growing warmer at his closeness.

He is sitting very close, now. She can make out his beautiful pale lashes, past the wisps of his hair.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I—I want to help you, Kai, but I don’t think I can do it here. I think… There’s so much good that we lived through, yes, but this city has not always been kind to you. There are places in the world that are rich with magic—untainted by all the death this city has seen. If we went there, together, then maybe… maybe I could help you.”

The heart-shaped emerald rests on her chest, heavy around her throat. She finds herself thinking of it, and Nadia, as Asra looks at her with wide eyes and a hopeful expression.

Trevor’s heavy boots start stomping up the stairs— _deliberately_ loud, Kai thinks—and she is saved from having to answer Asra.

“Just think on it,” he says, giving her hands a squeeze before withdrawing.

“Okay,” Trevor asks as he reaches the final stair, “where does it all _go_?”

“Compost for the garden,” Asra answers, breezily. He stands and goes back to the kitchen, where he offers Trevor his cup of tea.

“Huh,” Trevor muses, before taking a sip of his tea. He fails to cover up the face he makes after drinking it, though he _desperately_ tries, as Asra turns back to Kai.

“I think that’s about as long as I can linger,” he says. “I’ll meet you outside, Kai? Ah, Trevor, which horse is yours? I didn’t see you on the street…”

Trevor, dumping his tea into the nearest potted plant behind Asra’s back, jerks back so Asra doesn’t catch him doing it. “Uh—I have—that is—”

“He rode in the carriage with me,” Kai answers for him.

“Do you uh,” Trevor pauses, and puts his cup aside so he can take off his helmet. “My clothes, do we need to, uh…”

“I believe I’ll manage just fine,” Asra says with a sly smile.

Kai feels a rush of magic. She sees Asra’s whole body begin to glow with a very subtle, pale light, before it fades, and he stands looking exactly as he did before.

Trevor, however, just stares at Asra, his eyes looking like they might pop out of his head.

“Wow,” the young guard says. “That’s uh—that’s a neat trick.”

Kai glances over to the windows. In their faint reflection, she sees two Trevors standing in the room, one looking stunned, and the other with an amused smile on his face.

“Take your time,” Asra says, fondly, to Kai.

She turns back as he approaches her. He hesitates a moment, uncertain, before reaching out and cupping her face with his hand.

“Whatever you decide,” he says, dropping his voice low. “I’ll be here for you. Alright?”

His smile is easy and warm. She feels some of the tightness in her chest ease.

“Alright,” she agrees.

He bends and kisses her one more—a slow, soft, pleasant drag of his lips against hers—before parting from her, reluctantly.

“See you soon,” he says. Then he retrieves Faust from the kitchen—where she had been trying to crawl onto Trevor’s shoulder—and heads down the stairs, to the garden door.

She stands there a moment, somehow feeling warm and content and bizarrely off-centre all at once, until Trevor clears his throat.

“So uh,” he says, “Asra. Good kisser?”

Kai stares at him.

“Just… you know. Asking for a friend,” he says, blushing furiously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warning for panic attack, gun violence (no death), riots.**


	8. The Hermit II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you have already been spending a lot of time reflecting on your inner self, then the appearance of the reversed Hermit may suggest that you are spending too much time alone in excessive isolation… Do not underestimate the value of staying connected with others, even while you are going through your spiritual journey. Be mindful, too, of other people’s needs. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/hermit/)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty violent chapter folks, heads up.

When Kai emerges from Asra’s shop, Cinis in her bag and Trevor still hiding away inside, a rider with a message has arrived from the palace. She looks slightly hassled by the crowd, her uniform slightly askew and her too-skinny horse pawing at the ground restlessly, but the young woman sits a little taller when she sees Kai, and takes a deep breath.

“Magician,” she says. “I bring tidings from Count Lucio. He requires the use of the carriage he has lent you, and his soldiers, elsewhere. As such, they will be unable to escort you back to the palace. He expects you will arrive in time for dinner regardless.”

Kai glances over at the massive crowd waiting for her beyond the wooden barriers. “Of course he does,” she says.

The messenger gives her a sympathetic look, before turning her horse around and heading back into the crowd. The soldiers are arguing amongst themselves about who is going to get the carriage _back through_ the throngs of people, and Kai spots Asra among them, standing slightly off to the side.

He jogs over when he sees her, looking worried.

“Do you think he’s moving Muriel?” he asks, softly.

Kai shakes her head. “He probably just wants it back in one piece,” she says, wincing as someone throws another bottle at it.

“I’m to escort you back _alone_ ,” he tells her, incredulously. “Alone! Half of the city is out looking for you! Lucio’s obviously putting you in danger to try and draw me out.”

She gives him a sideways glance, and can’t help a smile. “I mean,” she starts to say.

One corner of his mouth twitches, and there’s an amused gleam to his eyes that is rapidly becoming familiar. “Hush. He doesn’t know it’s worked.”

Before she can say anything else, the guards start to move the wooden barriers to allow the carriage through.

“This way,” Asra says, grabbing her hand.

Together they take off at a run, Asra leading her by the hand around the back of the shop. Kai can hear people in the crowd begin to shout, though she can’t make out the words. Part of her hopes they’ll just give up and go home.

Asra leads her past the shop—Cinis quickly grows tired of the bag being jostled so he simply jumps out and runs alongside them, his tail straight up and his ears forward. Kai sees Faust poke her head out of Asra’s scarf, turning and flicking her tongue at Kai with a pleased expression before facing forward.

 _Fun!_ Faust says as Asra leads them down a side alley.

This side of town, the alleys are piled high with sodden ash and old debris. Asra has to slow to avoid tripping over anything, but he moves through the maze of twisting, narrow paths between the buildings as if he has done so hundreds of times.

Eventually, the buildings begin to spread out a little, and there is less ash and more piles of mud, and tired looking people huddled up in blankets who looks up at them as they pass, their gazes passing over Asra without much notice before locking, wide-eyed, on Kai.

When they finally stop to catch their breath, Kai looks around Asra to see the town square, empty as usual with only one or two people hurriedly making their way through, and the guards stationed at the fountain to prevent vandalism of the statue of Lucio at its center.

“Alright,” Asra says between breaths. “We have to use the main streets for a bit, but if we take another detour through the alleys once we get to the old markets, we should make it back to the palace…” He closes his eyes briefly. “By midnight.”

Cinis wanders between Kai’s feet, rubbing himself against her boots and purring loudly. Over their bond, she feels excitement and a relief at being allowed to wander around, and some mild disappointment that he can’t chase rats, he’s too busy chasing after her.

She blinks, surprised by the clarity of his thoughts. “We can’t run around like this until _midnight_ ,” she says. “Your friend is still in trouble, and I don’t know what he’ll do to Julian if we’re not back by dinner…”

“I’m sure you being there won’t stop him from doing whatever he wishes with Ilya,” Asra says, his lip curling with distaste. “But you’re right. I don’t think there’s a way we can avoid the crowds. I can disguise you—”

He actually raises his hands, about to cast, but Kai shakes her head. “If people don’t see me heading to the palace, then Lucio will _know_ you’re involved.”

Asra drops his hands with a sigh. “I could at least make you less…” he gestures at her vest. “Noticeable.”

She looks down at the bright blue vest, and the sun-yellow scarf, and thinks of what Serris said. _My lady’s magician._

She tugs at the emerald thoughtfully.

“Or,” she says, slowly, “we beat Lucio at his own game.”

Asra tilts his head and looks at her like she’s suddenly started speaking another language. “What?”

Kai takes a deep breath. She stands tall, squares her shoulders, and walks with purposeful strides out of their hiding place.

Asra follows her without hesitating, one step behind her.

They cross the square without incident—the guards at the fountain stare at Kai the whole while, and she tries not to look too closely at them but they mostly just look _confused_. At the brightness of her attire or at her boldness when half the city seems to be looking for her, she isn’t sure. But they don’t try to stop her from walking towards the broad lane that leads to the palace.

Further up the lane, Kai can see a crowd—it’s one of the few markets left in Vesuvia, and people are milling about, hoping to get whatever food they can to bring home to their families.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Asra asks as they draw closer. “No one’s noticed us yet. We could still go the long way.”

Kai only takes a deep breath, nods, and keeps walking forward.

It doesn’t take long for them to join the crowd—and only a little longer before people start noticing her, the vibrant blue of her vest standing out in a sea of grey and brown.

To her eye, Asra stands out just as boldly as he walks in front of her, his red coat swirling around him as he moves. But to anyone else, he looks simply like a too-young guard, with armour that doesn’t quite fit and his hand on his sword.

“Step aside,” Asra says, to anyone who gets too close. She can hear an imitation of Trevor’s voice layered over top the magician’s, and wonders if she should tell him to make it a little squeakier. “Official business, let us through.”

All around them, Kai can hear the murmurs of conversation about _her_.

“Is that the magician?”

“I heard she stopped a riot at the docks last night.”

“I heard she _started_ it.”

It seems, however, that most people simply don’t know what to _do_ with her, out in the open like this. She watches the crowd around her with wide eyes—for the most part, people look at her fine clothing and the gem hanging from her throat with envy, or at her with suspicion, but they give her and Asra enough space to walk.

Kai keeps a hand on her bag, regardless.

She loses track of how long they walk, before Cinis hisses—and Kai looks down at her side to see a small boy, his cheeks smudged with dirt and his hair tousled, recoiling from the cat. He’s holding a hand out, as if he were reaching for her—her bag or her arm, she’s not sure.

She stops and bends over to stroke Cinis’ back, placating him. The cat hates children almost as much as he hates Julian, even though she’s _tried_ to tell him they won’t all throw rocks at him in barrels.

“He’s not very friendly,” she tells the boy, softly. “Did you need something?”

He stares up at her while she takes quick measure of him—gaunt cheeks, too-thin wrists… Odd cuts on his hands that haven’t healed properly. A young cutpurse in training, then.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any money,” she tells him. “But I can give you something to eat, if you’re hungry?”

His eyes grow wider, and his head jerks in the tiniest of nods.

“Kai!” Asra calls with Trevor’s voice, further ahead. He must not have noticed that she stopped.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out a threadbare scarf that she’d filled with fruit. The boy’s eyes bug out as she does—the scarf is bigger than the bag—and she very nearly laughs.

“It won’t stay fresh long. Make sure you share it,” she tells him, holding the scarf out.

The boy hesitates a moment—before snatching it from her hands and taking off into the crowd.

Kai stands as she watches him go—and she smiles as she sees a few more small forms darting through the crowd excitedly, calling to one another.

“Thank you!” the boy calls over his shoulder, as if someone’s just told him to mind his manners.

“Kai,” Asra says again, this time at her side. “There you are, I thought—you should have _said_ —”

 “Miss Magician,” comes another voice at her side, drawing her attention away from Asra’s panicked face.

The voice belongs to a man who is probably a few years older than Julian, who has had a leg amputated and is leaning heavily on a crutch to compensate. He towers above the crowd, and has the look of a man who was once in excellent physical shape, but hasn’t eaten properly in quite some time. A former soldier, then—unable to find work after his injury. “Do you have more food to spare? My daughter, she’s been so unwell…”

“Walk with us a moment,” Kai says to the man, ignoring the pointed _look_ Asra gives her.

The man hobbles uneasily at her side, sending Asra a wary glance. “I don’t…”

“Ignore him, he’s harmless,” Kai says. “Can you describe your daughter’s symptoms to me? Be as specific as you can, please.”

“It’s not the plague,” he says, his voice just on the edge of desperate and tears in his eyes. “It’s not. I’ve seen—I saw it at sea, when all you’ve got left is hardtack…”

She pulls out another scarf, overfull with fruit. “You can sell the pomegranates if you like,” she tells him. “But give her one to eat, first. Then, buy her lemons and put their juice in her water. And good meat, if you can get it. Jerkied will do, but make sure she drinks lots of water, too much salt could dehydrate her easily right now.”

“Thank you, Miss,” he says, still managing not to cry. “Thank you.”

“ _This_ is your plan?” Asra whispers as the man hobbles off into the crowd.

“It’s better than nothing,” Kai hisses back, before a short stocky woman approaches.

“My wife,” the woman says, wringing her hands. “Oh, I can’t believe I’m asking a _magician_ for help, but…”

“Walk with me,” Kai says, and the woman falls in step at her side.

“My wife’s had a baby,” the woman finally continues. “We have a—a beautiful girl. But she’s not eating enough, and my wife is trying so hard but the baby isn’t eating and she just gets weaker, and weaker…”

“It sounds like the baby is tongue-tied,” Kai says, when the woman’s tears become too much for her to speak. “I know a good midwife, she won’t charge you anything. If you take the baby to the Rowdy Raven and ask for Mazelinka, she’ll be able to help you. Alright? Rowdy Raven, Mazelinka.”

“Rowdy Raven,” the woman repeats, sniffling. “Mazelinka. Rowdy Raven, Mazelinka…”

She veers off into the crowd with purpose, still repeating those words like a mantra, and a tall person with a stooped back takes her place. “Magician,” they say, without preamble. “My lover is cold, always, no matter how warm the day grows. We used to get warming spells, before magic was banned. Can you help?”

Kai gives them a heavy blue shawl she’d taken from the drawers at Asra’s shop. “I can’t give you anything magical,” she says, sadly, “but I can give you this. It’s the warmest I have.”

“Hang on,” Asra says, with Trevor’s voice. “There’s a bit of dirt…”

She hands him the shawl, and he pretends to be brushing it off. But Kai sees the glimmer of moonlight-silver magic at his fingertips, hidden from the crowd by the movement of the shawl, and when he passes it back, it feels like holding a sunbeam in her hands.

“We were just talking about Maidenhair leaf,” Asra says, “weren’t we, miss Kai? About how if you make it into a tea, it  will improve circulation? My old man, he takes it every morning, helps with his feet.”

He winks at her, and the warmth in her chest comes more from his smile than the shawl she passes to its new owner.

“I wouldn’t believe this isn’t magic if you hadn’t told me,” they say, voice soft with wonder. “Maidenhair leaf? We will have to try that. Thank you, Magician.”

Kai looks back up at Asra. “Thank you,” she says, softly.

He shrugs. “Magic’s meant to help people,” he tells her, under his breath. And then, with a lopsided smile, he asks, “How’s my Trevor impression?”

“Could be squeakier.”

Asra barks out a surprised laugh—and she allows herself a moment to revel in the flash of his teeth, and the dimples in his cheeks, before turning to the young man jogging up to her side.

“You have any more food?” he asks, not even skipping a beat.

Kai reaches into her bag with a smile.

 

By the time they arrive at the palace, the sun is setting and Kai’s bag is mostly empty.

“Do you have anything left?” Asra wonders, concern furrowing his brow.

“The grey shawl you gave me this morning, and…” _and the blue dress_. She shakes her head, trying to cool her suddenly-warm face. “And another thing.”

At the mention of the shawl, Asra’s expression eases, a smile sneaking up onto his features.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I should have asked you before giving it all away…”

But he shakes his head, looking unbothered. “It was a good plan,” he admits, looking down at her with crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. “Though I don’t think it’s going to make it any easier for you to move through the city, from now on.”

“I’ll just take clothes from the palace,” Kai says.

Asra can only laugh in reply.

She looks for Nadia once they reach the gates, but does not see her. Instead, there is a servant waiting for them both, wringing their hands uneasily.

“Lord Lucio requests that you dine with him alone tonight,” the servant informs Kai. “Right this instant, in fact.”

They deliver the news as one might inform someone of the death of a family member.

Asra walks at her side as the servant leads them down the halls. His hand keeps brushing against hers, and it takes all of her willpower not to reach out and hold it tight.

Her heart beats so hard in her chest that she’s certain it will burst.

The servant leads them to the same dining room Kai has dined with Lucio and his courtiers every night in the palace—only this time the door opens, and the long table is set for two. Lucio’s place, on one end, and the seat directly to his left.

The first thing she notices as she walks through the door is the change in temperature between the hall and the room. It feels like she walks into a _wall_ of heat. There is food already on the table, steam rising off it as if the gold-plated covers have all just been removed. There is enough there for ten people, at least—a whole roasted duck, a fish as long as her arm, and five other dishes she can’t name.

Lucio stands with his back to the door, staring into the roaring fire. “Leave us,” he snaps, the moment Kai is inside.

She thinks she hears Asra begin to protest—but then the door is slammed shut behind her, and she is in the room alone with the count of Vesuvia.

She stares at his back for several long, agonizing minutes. She watches as he stands there, utterly still, staring into the flames without moving a muscle.

At length, he runs his metal hand over and through the blaze burning in the fireplace—his motions slow, as if he were warming a hand of flesh instead of sticking it directly into the flames.

“The Good Doctor Jules missed our appointment this morning,” he says. His voice sounds—odd. Rougher than normal.

Kai is honestly too terrified to process what that means.

“Although,” he adds, somewhat wryly, finally looking over his shoulder at her, “a man in such great health as myself must be rather low on his list of priorities.”

There is sweat glistening on his forehead, and his plague-red eyes look glazed over.

Just like…

No. He was cured a year ago—his red sclera are permanent, despite his recovery. Everyone knows that. Julian’s been beating himself up trying to remember _how_ he cured the count as long as Kai’s known him. The whole city is waiting with baited breath for his miraculous recovery to be repeated.

“Come,” the count says, whirling and approaching the table. “The food grows cold. You wouldn’t want it to go to waste, would you, little assistant?”

Kai wants nothing less in this moment than to get one step closer to the count, and that roaring fire. Lucio doesn’t sit immediately—instead he goes to her chair and pulls it back for her. He pauses and looks up at her with a smile, the very picture of chivalry.

Well. He would be, if said smile wasn’t razor-sharp.

She takes a deep breath, and joins Lucio at the table.

Lucio tucks in the chair as she sits. She can smell its wood starting to burn under Lucio‘s metal grip.

He leans in and whispers in her ear, “Was that so frightening?”

She can’t breathe.

He barks a too-loud laugh, and she jumps in place. He releases the chair, laughing still, before dropping into his own without ceremony or pretense.

Kai can feel Cinis practically vibrating with rage in her bag, resting at her feet. _Don’t you dare come out_ , she thinks towards him, desperately hoping it translates over whatever Asra did with their bond.

Lucio tears a leg off the duck, and immediately digs in. “Help yourself,” he says, grinning. “It’s still hot.”

She raises a single brow at him, before taking her fork and knife and delicately slicing the breast off the duck.

They eat in total silence. Kai offers no comment, asks no questions—and Lucio does much the same. He stares at her throughout the whole meal, only looking away to take heavy drags of his wine, or to pour himself more.

Kai eats as much as she can make herself. Her stomach turns at the richness of the food, the heat of the room, and the proximity to the most terrifying man in the city. Everything is heavily seasoned, with none of the delicate touches she is used to in the meals prepared for her separately. There is no accompaniment that makes the meal feel less heavy—nothing that is not full of butter, weighed down with oil or boiled in wine.

Lucio drains the second bottle of wine himself—Kai doesn’t dare to touch her glass, no matter how dry her mouth is. She needs her mind clear for this.

“Your manners,” Lucio slurs, out of the blue, “are appalling.”

“Thanks,” Kai replies, dryly.

He barks a laugh at that—and it tapers off as he continues to stare at her, his smile fading slowly.

“I mean it,” he says. “You have made no attempt at conversation, or to compliment the food. Obviously someone in my household has seen fit to make you look a little less like you walked in out of the gutter, and you haven’t thanked me for it. And you’ve been pushing around that gristle with your fork for the past five minutes. Not to mention, you haven’t tried any of the wine.”

He grabs the third bottle off the ice, and uncorks it with one of his gold talons. He pours himself a glass, and splashes at least a third of that amount on the table.

“Look at you,” he says. “Sitting there like living in the lap of luxury is a torment. Oh, woe is me, I have to eat delicious food and get drunk with the count of Vesuvia, my life is so _hard_.” He takes a long drag of his wine, his eyes never leaving hers. “What a fucking waste.”

She stares back at him. She can feel sweat rolling down the small of her back, it’s so damn hot in here.

“Well,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “I was _hoping_ to figure out what _that magician_ saw in you. Get a little piece of _that_ puzzle all sorted, but there you are, charming as a bump on a fucking log. In a swamp.”

There’s a pressure building in her head. She tries to focus on breathing, on the lepidolite resting against her chest, under her shirt—

Lucio laughs a little, but it tapers off quickly. His expression falls again, and his eyes narrow as he stares her down.

“I’ve seen prettier faces,” Lucio drawls. “Married one, too. So, maybe you can tell me—what’s so special about yours?”

Kai is saved from having to answer by a commotion in the hallway—she hears raised voices, and then the door swings open and Julian throws himself into the room.

“Unhand her, you—!”

He stops mid-sentence, blinking rapidly as he sees Lucio, lounging at the head of the table, and Kai by his side. Sweating, with a massive headache building, and her stomach rolling as she desperately tries not to vomit, but unharmed.

Julian’s shoulders slump with visible relief as his expression rapidly switches from alarmed to confused.

“About _fucking_ time,” Lucio snaps, slamming his drink down on the table. He shoves his chair back so fast it scrapes on the tile floor, and immediately storms over to Julian.

Julian, to his credit, stands his ground—standing tall, his shoulders squared, and his confusion dropping into a look of utter _loathing_ directed at the count.

Lucio doesn’t even seem to notice—he shoves past Julian, knocking him _hard_ with his shoulder, and storms out of the room.

“Don’t make me wait,” he snarls, without even glancing back.

The moment he’s gone, Julian rushes to Kai.

She stands, shaking. Cinis slips out of her bag to sink his claws into Lucio’s chair, his ears flat against his skull.

“Did he hurt you?” Julian asks, his hands on her shoulders. “Was the food poisoned? Tell me the food wasn’t poisoned—”

He tries to tilt her head back and look in her eyes, but she swats him off. “I’m fine!” she snaps, clenching her fists to hide their shaking. “I’m not an idiot, I only ate what he ate first.”

“The silverware could have been poisoned,” Julian says, undeterred. “Stick your tongue out and say _ah_.”

She feels a rush like a cool evening breeze passing over her—and she sees Asra over Julian’s shoulder, his own worried features slowly relaxing as his spell fades. “There’s no poison, Ilya,” he says. “She’s fine.”

At the sound of Asra’s voice, Julian’s face contorts with about five different emotions, each of them too quick for Kai to identify, until it settles on anger.

“And you!” he whirls, pointing his finger in Asra’s face. “You’re supposed to protect her! What are you doing leaving her alone in a room with Lucio?!”

“That’s rich,” Asra replies, his lips curling and his eyes narrowing. “Especially coming from you.”

Julian throws his hands up in the air. “What does that even _mean_?!”

Behind Kai’s shoulder, she hears a familiar _sigh_.

“Do they always waste this much time arguing?” Nadia wonders, and Kai turns to see her standing near the fireplace, one hand on her hip and looking at Asra and Julian with a raised brow and a rather annoyed expression.

Asra blinks at the sound of her voice—looks over, and then his eyes grow wide, and he just… stands there, for a second. Until he whispers, ever so softly, “Nadi?”

Nadia’s eyebrow rises higher. “And you would be my alleged murderer, I suppose.”

Asra’s expression falls, and for a moment he looks… utterly heartbroken. Before he takes a deep breath, and his face is passive once more.

“You can see her, too?” Kai asks.

Julian looks around the room. “Who?” he asks, honestly baffled.

“The countess,” Kai tells him. “She’s standing—“

Julian waves his hands in the air. “I don’t have time for—this is _ridiculous_.” He runs a hand over his face, grumbling something under his breath that Kai can’t hear.

“I believe I’ve found your friend, magician,” Nadia says, as Julian tries to compose himself.  “He’s been in the dungeons with Quaestor Valdemar since they brought him in.”

Asra’s eyes grow wide. “We have to hurry.”

That seems to snap Julian out of it. His expression grows serious, all of a sudden, and he regards Kai once more. “Kai,” he says. “I…”

He trails off. He sighs, and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Be careful,” he tells her, softly. “Please.”

“That’s my line,” she replies, trying to smile. “Julian, what’s—?”

He bends down to kiss her forehead. Then he messes up her hair a little, with a lopsided grin, before turning to Asra.

Julian and the magician share a long, silent look. “Take care of her,” Julian eventually says.

Asra tries to smile a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Always.”

“Julian—”

He gives Kai a quick, two-fingered salute as he turns on his heel—his eyes suspiciously bright—and heads out the door.

She almost follows him—but Asra catches her arm.

“He’s buying us time,” he says, his voice tight. “Let’s go.”

Kai hesitates a moment longer.

“This way,” Nadia says. She walks through a painting hung on the wall—unsurprisingly of Lucio—before sticking her head back out. “There’s a hidden switch on the side.”

Nadia leads them through a long hall so narrow that Kai and Asra have to shuffle sideways down some of them.

“Is this really faster?” Asra huffs, after he has to use magic to clear cobwebs from their path for the fourth time.

“Unless you want to go through half of Lucio’s personal guard,” Nadia retorts, “it is certainly _safer._ ”

She leads them up a set of stairs, several of which are broken or missing entirely, and Asra and Kai have to watch their footing carefully. Nadia’s slipper-clad feet take each step easily, floating on thin air as if all the stairs are perfectly intact.

A few glances up at Asra confirm that he is paying rapt attention to everything Nadia does—every time she passes through a wall, or stands on a step that isn’t there, his eyes narrow a little further, as if looking at a particularly vexing puzzle.

“You’d be surprised how many secret passages there are hidden in these walls,” Nadia tells them as they go. “I’ve had a year to explore, but I imagine I’ve only found a fraction of them—I doubt even the staff knows about this one, in particular, it’s so poorly maintained.”

The walls here are thin—Kai can hear movement on the other side, people moving dishes or furniture, and talking to one another, though their voices are too muffled for her to make out the details. Until they reach the top of the stairs, and pass into utter silence—only the creaking of old floorboards under their feet, and wind whistling through cracks in the walls.

“Nadi,” Asra hisses, “the dungeons are _down_. Where are you taking us?”

“The safest route,” Nadia replies. She meets Asra’s gaze with a stern expression, but her eyes flick to Kai and it falters. “As long as Lucio does not see you, that is.”

Asra’s eyes go wide. “You mean—”

The silence is interrupted by the sound of a door slamming open—and Kai hears Julian shout, before something crashes, _hard_ , to the floor.

She shoves past Asra and takes the stairs two at a time.

She hears Julian’s voice again. “If you go anywhere _near_ her again, I’ll—”

Lucio laughs.

She comes out onto a landing, and there are several holes in the wall just big enough for her to see flickering lamplight through—she finds the biggest one and peers through it, heart in her throat.

There’s not much of a view—she sees an overturned rack of polished armour, a broken wine bottle, and some weapons on the floor. Julian stands _just_ where she can see him, what she can make out of his face twisted in rage.

“You’ll what? _Please_ , Jules, threaten me. I’d like to hear the best you can come up with.”

“I’ll disappear,” Julian snaps. “I’ll walk right out of this cesspit of a city and leave you to lord over the dead and the dying. Wouldn’t that be _fitting_? The dead count of a dead city—not that you’d last long enough for it to matter.”

Kai sucks in a breath—and quickly covers her mouth with her hand to smother it.

Lucio, however, only laughs. “Oh, _Jules_ ,” he says—and he passes in front of Kai’s viewpoint, throwing his shirt onto the floor. Kai sees great black veins crawling all over his shoulders and back, diseased sores spreading on his flesh.

He steps forward, and with his gold arm he grabs Julian by the throat and slams him into the wall.

Julian chokes. His hands scramble for purchase on the hand, trying to pry Lucio’s fingers from his throat, but unable to fight the enchanted arm’s strength.

“You and I both know that you won’t let my city burn.”

Lucio presses his right hand flat against Julian’s face, and Kai watches the mark on Julian’s throat light up. She watches as the veins all across Lucio’s back begin to shrink, the black fading, sores healing before her eyes and becoming smooth, pale flesh once again.

Pinned to the wall, Julian convulses. The veins on his face swell, then turn red, then black. His eye turns completely red—and once Lucio drops him he falls to the floor, spasming, gasping for breath.

Lucio _tsks_. “So _dramatic_ ,” he drolls, stepping over Julian, before going to presumably retrieve his shirt. “I’ve been living with that for _days_ , you know.”

Kai watches as Julian’s breath evens out—as the veins on his face slowly turn back to normal, and the red from his eye fades.

Asra tugs at her arm.

“We must hurry,” Nadia whispers, as if Lucio will somehow hear her.

Kai nods, her hand still covering her own mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. She lets Asra lead her away from the hole in the wall, and she tries to ignore Lucio’s voice as he continues to harass Julian.

“What good are you, anyway?” Lucio wonders. “Can’t cure the plague, can’t even keep my city from burning itself down…”

Nadia leads them around a corner, closer to the sound of Lucio’s voice. Kai, her hand pressed on the wall to steady herself, feels a gap in the plaster—a hidden door, probably to be opened from the other side.

“I suppose you’re keeping _me_ charming and healthy,” Lucio muses with a laugh. He’s standing right next to Kai, on the other side of the wall.

Julian coughs. “Still in the negative, then,” he quips.

Lucio is standing close enough that Kai can hear him breathe. A single, angry exhale through his teeth, almost like a hiss.

“You test my patience, Doctor,” Lucio says.

Kai can hear Julian’s shoes scuffing on the floor as he slowly gets to his feet. “You’re a tyrant and a maniac and the city would be better off if you would just go ahead and die already.”

Lucio whirls, heavy footfalls leading him away from the hidden door and towards Julian. Kai hears the sound of metal on flesh, the crunch of a broken nose, and then the sound of Julian colliding with the wall.

For his part, Julian only laughs.

“Go ahead.” He spits—and Kai hears a crack as, presumably, his nose snaps back into place. “Do your worst.”

Julian cries out again. Kai feels along the break in the wall, desperately—where’s the switch, _where’s the switch—_

“Through here,” Nadia hisses. “Quickly!”

Asra’s hand is still on her arm. She tries to shake him off, but he only tugs more firmly at her until she comes away from the wall. One moment, they are in a filthy hall, and she can hear Julian laughing and the count swearing—

And then she passes backwards through air that makes her skin itch, and they are somewhere totally different. There are old oil lanterns on the walls, though they shine bright enough—the walls around them are stone, and the air is damp, as if they are underground. They are standing on a landing at the bottom of a set of stairs, as if they have just come out a door that doesn’t exist in the wall behind them.

There are screams coming from somewhere not too far away, directly above them.

Asra lets out a breath. “Of course,” he says, his voice shaking. “Of _course_ he has a portal leading from his rooms to the dungeon. What a—he’s—”

“We have to go back,” Kai says. “We have to—”

Nadia, standing firmly between Kai and the portal’s entrance, puts one hand on her hip. “No,” she says. “He’s buying you the time you need—in case you hadn’t noticed, Lucio was about to come down here himself, and then I doubt you’d be able to rescue anyone.”

Kai exhales—she _knows_ Nadia’s right. She knows that. But…

_Can’t cure the plague._

She wipes at her eyes with the heel of her palm.

She feels a warm, solid hand on her shoulder. “He knows what he’s doing, Kai,” Asra says, softly. “We need to go.”

She takes a deep breath and nods. Cinis winds about her legs, purring softly and radiating comforting feelings.

Faust chooses that moment to poke her head out of Asra’s scarf. _Friend!_ she calls, excited, looking down the stairs—blessedly _away_ from the screaming.

As soon as they round the curve of the stairs, they have reached the bottom level of the dungeons. There is only one door there, with lamplight flickering away inside. Asra hurries through, and Kai follows slowly behind, Nadia at one shoulder and Cinis at the other.

The room is not very large—probably a little smaller than the clinic’s main room. In the center there is a man, bigger than Kai has ever seen, kneeling, bowed and chained to the floor by his neck, legs and arms. He is breathing short, ragged breaths, and there are red, bloody marks all over his back.

Asra has already crossed the room, and is hurriedly removing the chains with magic. “Muri,” Asra says, his voice high with panic. “It’s alright, I’m here. Oh, Muri, I’m so sorry—say something, anything. _Please.”_

Kai looks around the room—in part to make sure no one else is in there with them, and to give Asra’s friend _some_ respect. Some of those wounds look deep.

There is a desk on the far side of the room, with long implements lying on it. All of them well-cleaned—all of them long enough that someone could stand a few feet back, and use them on the person in the center of the room.

Who… is chained in place, and immobile, unable to retaliate.

“Wait,” Nadia says, right as Kai looks down, and sees strange markings on the floor surrounding Asra and his friend. Around the same distance from the center as all the tools on the table.

“Asra!” Kai warns.

Just as Asra’s friend growls, “ _Trap._ ”

On the far side of the room, near the table, Kai hears the sound of metal grinding on metal—and then the marks on the floor light up, and Asra doubles over with a strangled gasp of pain.

“Asra!” Kai cries, rushing forward—but Cinis gets in her way, hissing a warning, all the fur on his body rising on end as he glares at the wall opposite.

Where the wall is sliding open, and a figure in an impeccable white doctor’s coat comes out, flanked by two of Lucio’s personal guard.

“Valdemar,” Nadia spits, eyes narrowing in distaste.

“I will admit,” Valdemar says, tugging their gloves higher up on their arms, “I did not think the magician who has evaded us for so long would fall for such an obvious trick. But, here we are, and there _you_ are.” They shrug, watching with disinterest as one of the guards picks up a long, spear-like object from the table. “And now that I have completed this little errand for the count, I will be able to continue my work.”

“I’ll distract them,” Nadia says. “Kai, get out of here.”

But the guard with the spear is approaching Asra, and Kai hardly hears Nadia’s warning.

“Don’t touch him!” she yells.

Valdemar looks at her as if they have only just noticed her, standing in the doorway.

“Oh,” they say. And then their eyes narrow, and crinkle, as if they are grinning with delight. “ _Oh._ How very _interesting_. Lucio’s current little pet project, wandering all the way down here, where he can’t hide her away.”

Valdemar gestures, and the other guard approaches Kai, drawing his sword. Cinis begins to growl in warning, and Kai feels the electricity of Nadia’s hands passing over her arm.

“Run!” Nadia says. “You must run!”

The guard with the spear stands before Asra, and raises it.

Asra’s friend strains against his bonds. “Asra,” he grunts, “ _get up_.”

But Asra can’t. He is curled on his side, twitching, breathing as though his throat is closed. Faust has fallen out of his scarf, and she is twisting and contorting on the floor, but Kai can’t hear if she’s trying to say anything.

Cinis yowls, and Kai snaps her gaze back to the cat. He hisses, swiping at the guard’s boot, but the guard simply kicks him out of the way.

“Cinis!” she cries.

On the floor, Asra’s eyes lock with hers. He tries to say something, but appears to be in too much pain—he tries reaching for her, but his hand shakes too much.

The guard with the spear thrusts it into his gut.

The man in chains _screams_ with rage.

Fire burns, surprised and unbidden, in Kai’s hands. Weak, and faltering, and she holds her hands out to the guard—

“Unhand her—” Nadia cries.

The guard grabs Kai by the throat, and shoves her through Nadia, against the wall at her back.

That electric charge she feels every time Nadia tries to touch her courses across her whole body for a heartbeat. Her vision goes dark for half a heartbeat—not from pain, but from every nerve in her body suddenly being overwhelmed. Then it converges on her chest, and vanishes entirely.

The guard is holding her to the wall by the throat. She claws at his arm, but it is covered in fine, protective armour—his face much the same, and though she tries to reach for his helmet to pry it off, he is significantly taller than her, and she can’t quite reach.

Fire sputters from her hands, frantic and uncontrolled. It glides over his armour harmlessly, fading away into the air.

The man holding her laughs darkly, and closes his hand tighter around her throat.

Kai gasps for air.

“Knock her around if you like,” Valdemar says, as if bored. “Just remember we need the body _intact_.”

As Kai struggles to breathe, she thinks she hears a voice. She hears it in the same way she hears Faust, but it’s different. Faust’s voice feels like a laugh, like a joke shared between friends.

This feels like the low, deep rumble of something very large, hiding somewhere very dark.

_Mine._

Her vision goes white, the temperature in the room spikes, and she hears the roar of a large animal.

Something slams heavily into the guard holding her. Kai falls to the floor, coughing, and at first she tries to recoil further into the wall—

Only to see the guard knocked to the ground, his armour sizzling, as he frantically tries to scramble away from—

From a massive, white-hot cat, flames rolling off his body as he stands between Kai and the guard. Easily as tall as her waist at the shoulders, his tail lashes, slowly, before he roars again, baring long and sharp teeth.

 _Mine_ , Cinis says, his voice clear in her mind. _Kai mine_.

“Holy shit,” Kai says.

The guard with the spear approaches Cinis. The cat’s ear twitches, and as the guard thrusts, Cinis vanishes—but no, there he is, suddenly a small dark shape darting between the guard’s legs. The guard overextends his thrust, and Kai throws herself forward to grab the end of the spear, yanking him forward.

He falls to the ground. Before he can get up, there is a giant, burning cat on top of him, snarling in his ear.

Kai stands uneasily, the spear in her hands. She turns to point it at the guard with the sword—but he is already rushing past her and through the door, screaming.

 She turns and points the spear instead at Valdemar, whose hands are still pressed together in front of their chest.

“I surrender,” they say—eyeing Cinis with intense interest.

Cinis lets out a low rumbling growl. The man pinned under him whimpers.

Kai jerks the spear towards Valdemar. “Hands up,” she snaps.

Valdemar rolls their eyes, but obeys. “Really, now,” they droll, “I don’t see why _that’s_ necessary. I can’t possibly compete with your pretty little burning cat, now can I?”

Cinis snarls.

“What did you do to Asra?”

“Oh, that?” Valdemar glances over their shoulder, as if they had actually forgotten about Asra, lying on the floor in pain. “A simple anti-magic field, dear. Harmless to me, but to your kind? _Excruciatingly painful._ Switch is back in that hidden room, if you’d like to turn it off.”

“ _Hurry_ ,” Asra’s friend hisses through gritted teeth.

Kai huffs out a breath. “Cinis, if they move—”

Cinis’s tail swishes back and forth. _Prey_ , he says, eyes gleaming.

The switch is easy to find. She pulls it and runs back out into the other room—but Valdemar stands exactly where she left them, watching her with that eerie, too-still smile.

Kai rushes over to Asra. He seems to have passed out, but he’s still breathing—same with Faust—so Kai jams her spear into the hooks holding the chains into the stonework, and tries to pry one out.

Asra’s friend yanks hard on his chain, and between the two of them, they get his arm free.

“Help Asra,” he snaps, grabbing the spear from her.

As he pries himself free, Kai kneels down next to Asra. His pulse is weak, but steady—his eyes are flickering behind his eyelids, so he’s not _too_ far gone. The wound to his abdomen is deep, but not as deep as she’d initially feared. He is still in very real danger of bleeding to death, however.

She pulls off her yellow scarf and wraps it tight around him.

“What are you _doing_?”

“Trying to slow the bleeding,” she snaps. “I don’t exactly have anything to stitch him back up with!”

He starts working on the last ring in the floor, the one his legs are chained to. “Just use magic!”

“I don’t know _how_!”

He pauses long enough to look at her like she’d just spoken in a different language.

“Figure it out.” He grunts as he pries the last ring out, and then he gathers up the loose chains in his arms. He glances over at the guard still pinned by Cinis—his armour beginning to smolder, and the man’s whimpers becoming panicked—and then levels Valdemar with a severe look.

“I had a feeling you were more resilient than you were letting on,” Valdemar muses, clearly fascinated.

Kai fusses over Asra while his friend starts to chain Valdemar and the guard together in the center of the room. Valdemar is compliant, as if the whole situation is more amusing than anything else, while the guard just looks relieved to no longer be in danger of being cooked alive in his armour.

“Your friend is looking rather pale,” Valdemar remarks, “isn’t he? How much blood has he lost, exactly?”

Kai, picking up a too-still Faust and resting her on Asra’s chest, ignores them.

“If you could measure it all and make a note in that book on the table, it would be _greatly_ appreciated. It’s for—”

Asra’s friend stuffs something into Valdemar’s mouth.

Kai touches the back of her hand to Asra’s forehead. His skin is clammy, and his normal golden brown complexion is turning ashen, and grey.

 _He’s going into shock_.

“ _Do_ something!” Asra’s friend snaps. “Anything!”

She bows over Asra, and presses her forehead to his. “Wake up,” she whispers. “Tell me what to do—Asra, _please_. I don’t know what to do.”

 _Kai_.

She jerks up. She turns, and Cinis is standing next to her—no longer on fire, his fur sleek and black, but he’s still just as massive. His eyes are twin burning embers as he meets her gaze, and she feels calmness radiating from him through their bond.

She exhales, slowly. “What do we do?” she asks.

 _Don’t worry,_ he says. _Act._

“Easy for you to say.”

Cinis moves to Asra and lies on the floor, his massive paws on either side of Asra’s head. He looks up at her, expectantly, but apparently has nothing else to say.

Don’t worry. Act.

She takes a deep breath. And then another—before she unties the scarf, and presses her hand to his wound.

She’s seen blood before—stitched people up, too. But she’s never liked the feel of it on her skin—and his blood is _hot_ , and slick. Her stomach turns, so she reaches up and grabs the lepidolite to steady herself.

She’s not sure _what_ to do—so she closes her eyes, and thinks of _balance_. And then she thinks of the second time she met Asra—of how her hand slipped, by accident, under his disguise, and his poorly-buttoned shirt. She tries to remember how his skin felt—warm, and smooth. Unbroken, unbloodied.

For a moment, it’s like she’s somewhere else entirely. It’s like she opens her eyes, and Asra is looking back up at her. His cheeks flushed, his pupils blown wide. Her hand running down the bare expanse of his chest, as she watches his lips part, and he starts to say a name—

She gasps, and opens her eyes to a dark, filthy dungeon—to Asra still out cold on the cold floor, her hand pressed to his skin. Still slick with blood, but when she takes her hand away, his skin is smooth and unbroken.

Her stomach rolls— _is there fire_ —and she falls backwards off of Asra.

A strong, steady arm catches her before she hits the floor. She’s clutching the lepidolite so hard that she worries she might snap it in half, and taking deep, desperate gasps for air.

“About time,” Asra’s friend rumbles. In spite of the impatience of his words, he steadies her until she nods, and only then does he let her go.

He tucks Faust into one of Asra’s pockets, and hoists him over one of his massive shoulders.

Kai plants a hand on Cinis’s back and stands, and the two necklaces she is wearing clink together.

_Nadia._

“Coming?” Asra’s friend asks.

Kai scans the room frantically—but the countess is nowhere to be seen. “Nadia?” she calls, brow creasing with worry.

There’s no answer.

Asra’s friend doesn’t say anything, but his obvious unease becomes nearly a physical thing the longer she tarries.

“I’m coming back, Nadia,” Kai calls—hoping beyond reason that Nadia can hear her. “I promise.”

Then she turns, and follows Asra’s friend out of the dungeon.


	9. Wheel of Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the Wheel of Fortune is reversed, your luck and fortune may be taking a turn for the worst. You may be experiencing unexpected change or there may be negative forces at play that are outside of your control, leaving you feeling helpless and powerless. You have a choice – you can either do nothing and hope things will get better, or you can take action to improve your situation. This is your opportunity to take control of your destiny and get your life back on track. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/wheel-of-fortune/)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings at the end of the chapter.

Before the sun rises, the good news spreads throughout the city: the city guard has apprehended the magician Asra, terrible murderer of the Countess Nadia Satrinava and blight to Vesuvia.

Before the noon bells toll, the bad news follows: Doctor Julian Devorak, hero of the city and the only hope for curing the plague, is missing.

His clinic is empty when broken into, and both he and his now-infamous assistant are nowhere to be found. The places he haunts are similarly barren—the bars he frequents void entirely of his presence.

No one has seen him in the city since he left for the palace the previous day.

No one in the palace has seen him since he met with Count Lucio in private.

It does not take long for the people of the city to gather outside the palace gates, while beleaguered city guards attempt to keep the peace.

“Where is the Doctor?” they call.

“What have you done with him?”

“You just want to keep the cure for yourself! You selfish bastard!”

Lucio does not greet his public. He does not emerge to calm their fears, or to risk rotten food or worse thrown at him through the gates.

He is downstairs, in his dungeon, torturing the magician Asra.

“Where _is_ he?” he snarls, tossing the knife aside.

Maddeningly, Asra’s wounds continue to mend before his very eyes. The magician’s lips are still quirked in that irritating cocky half-smile, and he lounges back in his chair as if this is nothing but an _inconvenience_ for him. Only his heavy breaths give away the amount of strain his body is under.

“You’re going to have to be more _specific_ ,” Asra quips.

“The doctor! Where have you hidden him?”

“Julian?” Asra tilts his head, looking up in a parody of thought. “Dunno. Haven’t seen him in… about a year. Got tired of him pretty quick, to be honest—a little _clingy_ for my tastes. Why? Do you need him for something?”

Lucio curses. He whirls on Valdemar, who is watching the whole exchange with the look of a professional watching a novice who is really, truly terrible at his job.

“Why aren’t you fixing your magic circle?”

Valdemar blinks at Lucio. “I would _hardly_ call such a sophisticated negative magic field generator a _magic circle_ —”

Lucio kicks over a chair.

“The control mechanism has been reduced to rubble by…” They blink, their expression actually changing into something like confusion for half a heartbeat. “Perhaps that girl. She must have done it.”

“Useless,” Lucio snaps. “Every one of you is _fucking useless!_ Not only have you allowed my Scourge to escape, you’ve _forgotten he exists_! And you let the girl go!”

“Yes,” Valdemar says, nodding. “I remember the girl—her cat was _very_ interesting.”

“That’s a word for it,” quips Asra under his breath.

“You remember her _cat_ but not— _useless_!”

As Lucio stalks over to the table, apparently to find something more threatening than a knife, Valdemar presses their hands together before them. They lean in to study Asra with a critical eye—who suddenly leans as far back in his chair as he can get from them.

“Fascinating,” they muse. “The negative magic field appears to have drained his magic supply significantly. I am impressed he’s managed to regain enough to heal himself at all. There _must_ be a limit to what he can heal.”

Lucio picks up something long and sharp, considers it, then tosses it onto the floor. “What.”

“I believe there is better use for your time than dealing with such a lowlife. Allow me to use my skills— _all_ of them—and I will happily produce for you, at the end of it all, the man you desire.”

Lucio sneers. “I _trusted_ you with my Scourge, and look where that got us! I am down the doctor keeping me alive, my Scourge, and the ungrateful _bitch_ running around in _my new body_.”

Asra’s expression is one of mingled confusion and horror.

One of the Crown Guard opens the door and enters the room. “My lord,” they say, with the air of someone who has accepted their fate.

“What?!” Lucio slams a pair of fine pliers down on the table. “I _specifically_ said there were to be _no_ interruptions!”

“I was chosen to inform you that there are civilians rioting outside the castle gates,” they inform him, voice flat. “The city guard are requesting reinforcements to keep the peace.”

“I’ll keep your damn peace,” Lucio snaps. He snatches his gun from his belt, and both the guard and Asra tense—but he is only checking that it is loaded, already turning on his heel to charge out the door. “Bringing their filth to _my_ doorstep—after all I’ve done for them! Ungrateful bastards.”

The rest of his tirade echoes in the hallways as he storms off, followed by the guard unfortunate enough to have drawn the short straw, and leaving Asra alone in the room with Quaestor Valdemar.

Valdemar watches Asra a moment longer. Then they turn, and walk with slow, deliberate steps across the room. They close the door, and bolt it shut.

Then they take off their gloves. And then they pull down their mask as they say, “Now that the pretenses are over with, perhaps we could have a… _proper_ conversation.”

Finally they turn, grinning from ear to ear with unnaturally sharp teeth as they regard the man cuffed to the chair in the middle of the room. “Doctor 069.”

 

Muriel’s been gone a while.

He’d left with his wolf—who had joined them the moment they entered the forest—to go get ingredients for a poultice for Asra. Who is still sleeping—or something _like_ sleep, but his skin is cold, and something about him feels distant. Wrong.

Faust lies on his chest, so still that she hardly seems to breathe.

“He’s drained,” Muriel had explained. “Faust, too. This is a place with strong magic—it should help them replenish.”

Kai had nodded, as if she understood when really, this was all beyond her in every meaning of the word. “When will you be back?”

Muriel had looked at her very seriously—and with no small amount of wariness. “As soon as I can,” was all he had said. “Keep him warm.”

There are enough gaps in the ceiling of the cave to see the stars fade and the sun begin to rise as she waits, and waits, for Muriel to return. Asra grows colder—Kai takes the grey shawl out of her bag and wraps him in it, and then rests his head on the bag like a pillow. Cinis lies on one side of him, the now-massive cat radiating warmth without actually lighting on fire, and Kai lies on his other side, shivering on the cold cave floor.

Asra grows colder, still. Faust, tucked under the shawl and all of Asra’s scarves, seems to be faring worse.

“Do you think he’s coming back?”

Cinis’s tail flicks back and forth, and his ears are flat against his skull. _He better._

Kai huddles closer to Asra. Then she curses, and sits up, looking around her. “Should we start a fire?”

 _Easy_.

“You’ll exhaust yourself. I mean with _wood._ ”

Cinis shifts a little—the proximity to Asra making him uncomfortable, but he’s clearly putting up with it out of affection for her. _No wood_.

He’s not wrong. There’s more light for Kai to see by, now, filtering through the largest hole in the cave ceiling. There’s plenty of dried up, dangling vines, but as she stands and reaches for them, they crumble into small flakes in her hand, to be blown away by a gentle breeze.

The wind carries them to the middle of some opening in the cave—where the walls are covered with dead, dried plant life, and on the opposite end she can see one section of the wall that is smoother than the rest, as if water once ran down it. She stands on a ledge looking over the bottom of the opening, which is covered in thick layer of grey, lifeless sand. The dead leaves fall in the center—where they whirl in a circle, slowly, over and over. They skirt the top of the sand, and some of it blows away, revealing something broad and round, with some sort of indent at its center…

_Kai!_

She inhales, sharply, and wavers in place—one foot hanging over the edge, over the strange grey sand. She steps back on solid ground, and turns back to Cinis.

He’s sitting up now, and glowering at her.

Kai looks back out to the opening before her. She can see a sliver of grey sky above, weak light filtering through heavy clouds.

 _Looks like rain_ , she thinks. And then she frowns, and wonders… It’s been raining _so much_ , lately—how is this place so dry?

She reaches up and crumbles a few more leaves in her hand—and watches as the wind carries them to the center, disturbing yet more sand as they go.

And exposing a path of stepping stones—or, not quite stones, but _something_. All of them round, and broad, and cracked all over.

She tucks her hair behind her ear, and chews thoughtfully on the inside of her lip—and again, finds her gaze drawn back to the center, to the crumbled leaves being dragged along the sand in a slow, precise circle.

“There’s something there,” she says.

Cinis growls low in his throat—the rumbling of it fills the whole cave, big as he is now. As clear a warning as any.

But the longer Kai looks, the more she feels it. She can feel it with the wind in her hair, in the rising of gooseflesh on the back of her neck. Something is _pulling_ her towards the center, or she’s being _drawn_ towards it.

 _Trust your instincts_ , Asra had told her.

She reaches up and takes the lepidolite in her hand. She closes her eyes and focuses on it a moment, taking slow, steadying breaths.

When she opens her eyes, at first, nothing has changed. But the longer she holds the crystal, and stares down at the center of the cave’s opening, at that strange indent where all the leaves have gathered…

Something’s there. Something that doesn’t belong.

She doesn’t know how she knows this—only that something _very_ wrong is draining the life and the magic from this place, and keeping it from helping Asra.

“Trust my instincts,” she says, softly. “Alright. I can do that.”

 _Kai_ , Cinis calls.

“Stay with Asra,” she tells him without looking back, and steps forward.

_Kai!_

“It’s fine,” she calls back, her boots crunching on the odd, round thing she thought was a stone. Cracks spread from her boots across its surface, and when she lifts her feet it flakes away, caught in the light breeze and pulled towards the center, exactly like the leaves from the hanging plants.

Lily pads. She’s walking on petrified lily pads.

“I normally like having a _plan_ ,” she says, walking a little faster. “Or knowing what the fuck is going _on_. You know. Simple stuff.”

The next lily pad seems to be bigger than the last. She can make out some of what were once veins spreading across the leaf, perfectly preserved under a thin layer of dust. “Like, for instance, Julian never really clarifying to the world that he didn’t _cure_ the count at all, and that Lucio is, in fact, just pretending to be perfectly healthy. That’s sort of _important_ information to have. Isn’t it?”

There’s a pressure building in her chest. She’s not sure if it’s because of the tears welling up in her eyes, or because she’s drawing closer to her destination.

“Or, maybe, Muriel giving me a better idea of when he’s coming back. Or maybe deciding _not_ to leave us in a cave full of dead plants. At least Asra told me you could… grow ten times your size and _light on fire_ , I honestly don’t think I could have handled that one without any warning.”

She has to jump to the next lily pad—and _that’s_ where she starts to wonder, because it didn’t look that far from the ledge. That’s where she starts to clutch at the lepidolite a little more firmly than necessary, and her heart begins to race.

Her boots dig in deeper with every step—and as she looks down, the cracks spread farther, she watches them split wider, and wider.

A single bright red beetle works its way out of the crack. Kai stares at it as it shakes the dust off its shell, and then another follows it—and another—

_Kai!_

She starts running.

“Stay with Asra!” she yells, trying not to think about the _crunching_ noises under her boots. As she runs, the air behind her begins to fill with the sound of insect wings—first only a few, and then more, and the further she runs, the more it seems that there is just a wall of sound behind her. The hum and snap of thousands of tiny, fragile wings, as the beetles take to the air.

Over her bond with Cinis, she feels him begin to panic.

“Stay there!”

She can barely hear herself shout.

As she jumps the gap to the lily pad in the center, she can feel beetles on her arms, in her hair. They swarm around her face and she swats at them, but it doesn’t deter them. Only a few moments pass before she can see nothing but swarming red beetles, pressing closer, crawling all over her skin and her clothes—

Flame sputters at her fingertips—and then rushes out of her all at once. Before her eyes the beetles burst into flame and turn immediately to ash, and the ones her flames do not reach immediately scatter.

Kai watches the white-hot flames flare around her, forming a circle that is both shield and sword. She peers through the fire, watching as the wave of red beetles recoils from the heat, and flees through the gap in the cave ceiling.

The shadow cast by the swarm looms, lingers in her vision for half a heartbeat. Her vision blurs, and she sees a different shadow entirely—a tall shape on the horizon, like a tower or a chimney perhaps, with smoke pouring out of it.

Pressure burns behind her eyes—and she hears a _sizzle_ , and the sound of steam.

She blinks. Then she hears it again, and again—and the shadow in her vision is gone, replaced instead by the steadily growing sound of steam. It takes her a moment to realise that it’s _rain_ , and she turns her gaze to the dusty earth surrounding her, finding that where her flames do not burn, there are heavy raindrops falling on the ground.

Kai exhales, and the flames recede. She looks up into the rain as it falls, and closes her eyes—and she just stands there a moment, as the rain begins to fall harder, and harder, as it washes the smell of dust and ash from the air. She breathes in air that—air that doesn’t smell like _smoke_ , like decay. Raindrops fall hard on her skin and she can almost _feel_ the city, feel a year of worry and sickness and death being washed away.

The lepidolite grows warm under her palm—like sunlight. Like a shy, but friendly, smile.

 _Wick, Asra,_ she hears her own voice say, as if from across a great distance. _It means a spark of life; the potential for growth._

_Oh—I thought you meant like a candle._

Her memory-voice laughs. Soft, and young, and fond.

The dried-up lilypad underneath Kai gives out, and her eyes snap open just before she plunges straight down into clear, clean water.

She breathes in a mouthful of it on the way down, she’s so startled. And she tries to kick, instinctively, but she doesn’t know _how_ , and the water is whirling all around her, pulling her down, turning her so she doesn’t know up from down—

Her lungs burn, and she squints through the water to see where she is, where she’s going, as that pressure keeps building in her head, as her heart hammers and her stomach turns—

Something grabs her. She fights it, instinctively—all she can see is a broad, dark shape—but then it starts pulling her, and there are bubbles escaping her lips as her body tries to get the water out of her lungs, so she lets herself be pulled.

They break the water, and Kai nearly chokes on the air. She keeps coughing and gasping, trying to expel water and take air in all in the same breath, as she is hoisted up onto the ledge, and left to lie on the floor on her side and attempt catch her breath.

She feels a hand on her back. A tentative touch, moving in slow circles.

“Slow down,” Muriel says. “Breathe. ”

She opens her eyes. He’s staring down at her with wide, unreadable eyes.

Breath by desperate breath, she steadies. She hears Cinis’s frantic thoughts like a buzzing in her ears—too rapid for her to pick out any particular words—but when she glances over he remains, diligently, at Asra’s side.

When she looks at Asra, his eyes flutter. Faust, sleeping on his chest, stirs, and then curls in tighter around herself, as if trying to go back to sleep.

Asra’s eyes open slowly—and he immediately turns his head, his gaze meeting hers as a small, weak smile crosses his lips.

“Kalani,” he breathes.

Her headache spikes, and her vision goes white before she passes out.

 

Kai wakes the first time in Muriel’s arms.

He is carrying her through the woods. Above their head a clear barrier is keeping the rain off of them—she watches the rain hitting it, then roll down in streams to fall somewhere outside her vision.

Above them there are tall trees with broad branches covered in vibrant green leaves. The sky above is grey and the rain is heavy, but Kai watches the trees as they walk, and can’t help but marvel at how beautiful they are. Wonder how old they must be, to get so tall.

She hears the call of a bird, somewhere far above. Then, moments later, she sees broad, pale wings, as it flies overhead. She doesn’t get much of a look at it, but she still gets the sense that it’s following them.

Asra says something—his voice is soft and low, and Kai can’t make out what he says.

Muriel’s voice rumbles in his chest, against her side where he carries her. “She’s awake now.”

She tears her gaze from the rain above, and to Muriel’s face. He is frowning down at her, and she’s not sure but she _thinks_ it’s concern in the furrow of his brow.

“How old are the trees?” she asks.

“Go back to sleep,” he tells her.

She shrugs a little. She doesn’t really want to—she’s never been outside the city before—but her eyes are already drooping, and she curls closer to Muriel’s chest, the sound of the rain in the forest and the steady beating of his heart lulling her back to sleep.

She wakes the second time—only sort of, really. She is too tired to open her eyes, so she doesn’t, but she thinks someone is tucking her into a bed, and putting cold and heavy fur pelts over her.

“It’s cold,” Asra says, sounding worried. “You’re cold as ice. I should have carried you, I know so many warming spells…”

The bed dips—Kai feels a strange-and-familiar shape lie alongside her, and a low rumbling purr that vibrates through her whole body as Cinis settles in between her and the wall.

Asra sighs. “Thank you, Cinis.”

There’s a moment of silence, but Cinis does not respond.

After a moment, the bed dips again as Asra sits next to her. She feels the back of his hand on her forehead, then her cheek. And then the backs of his knuckles brush her lips, as he sighs once more.

He sounds lonely.

“I keep leaving you when you need me,” he says, softly. “And then you turn around and save me, in the end.”

After a moment longer, he leans down and presses his lips to hers, so softly. He pulls back only a hair’s breadth, and she can feel the rush of his breath over her skin.

“Kalani… _Kai_. I won’t let it happen again.”

The bed creaks, and Asra leaves her side. She hears his soft footsteps, and then a door open—and there is a long, long pause before it closes again.

She falls asleep to Cinis’s steady breathing, and to the sound of rain on the roof.

When she wakes for the third time, she feels well rested, and warm. By the sound of it, the rain appears to have stopped, and she can hear chickens clucking somewhere outside. Cinis has worked his way under the heavy furs, and is curled up at the small of her back—cat-sized now, and sleeping soundly.

Kai opens her eyes slowly. The room she sees is lit by a fire in the hearth, over which hangs a heavy pot. Whatever’s in the pot is simmering, filling the room with scents of herbs, hearty root vegetables, and meat, and making Kai’s mouth water and her stomach rumble.

The room is sparse, with very few decorations lying around—everything is blankets, fur, and a few half-finished carving projects. There’s a well-chewed bone by the fire, and more animal pelts there still, covered in silver and white fur. On the workbench lies her clothes, and the emerald necklace from the palace. The lepidolite still hangs around her neck, its magic warm on her skin.

She shifts, and Cinis stirs with a _mrr_. She rolls onto her back, looking up at the ceiling of the little hut—admiring the great, massive tree roots twining with old wooden boards. There’s a small wooden carving of a bear on the shelf above the bed. Kai can only see its face peering out from where she lies on the bed, but she does not move to touch it. She admires it a moment, the deft lines with which it was carved, before very slowly crawling out of the warm pile of furs.

Her clothes—even the yellow scarf she’d tried to use to stop Asra’s bleeding—are all clean, intact, and now smell faintly of… something earthy, and warm. The name of it is on the tip of her tongue, for a moment, before she shivers, remembers that she is stark naked in a stranger’s home, and dresses in a hurry.

The emerald rests on the workbench, shining just as brightly in this small hut as it had the day she received it in the palace. Brighter still, she thinks, and her brow furrows as she picks it up by the chain, before dropping it into her palm so she can look at it more closely.

Strange. The more she looks at it, the more it seems like there’s something moving inside it.

She runs her thumb over its surface.

A spark of magic shoots out from the emerald.

Kai drops it. The magic bursts into the air around her, a brilliant bolt of lightning crackling across the whole room before surging, congealing into the air next to her, first as a shapeless white light, and then rapidly gaining form.

It seems like Kai blinks, and suddenly Nadia is standing beside her.

“—that is an _order_ …”

Nadia trails off mid-shout, her mouth hanging open a moment before she closes it, slowly. Her red eyes dart back and forth as she looks around the room, and her brows furrow in confusion as she takes it all in.

Her gaze finally settles on Kai. “Kai,” she says, leaning down and reaching for Kai’s shoulders. “Are you alright?”

“Me? What about _you_? How did you get in that necklace?”

Nadia blinks, clearly confused. “Necklace? We were just—”

The door bursts open, and Asra comes charging in, a ball of magic bright in his hand. “Kai,” he yells. “What—”

And then he stops and stares, slack-jawed, at Nadia.

Muriel appears in the doorway and looms behind him—scowling at Nadia the moment he sees her.

For several long heartbeats, nobody moves.

Then Faust pokes her head out of Asra’s scarf, looks directly at Nadia, and sways in place happily. _Friend!_

Cinis, finally coming out from under the furs, gives them all an irritated meow. _Sleeping_ , he informs Kai unhappily.

“Is anyone going to tell me where I am or do I have to guess?” Nadia snaps, her eyes wide with such an odd expression for her that it takes Kai a second to recognise it— _fear_.

That seems to jolt Asra into action. He steps into the hut, the spell falling from his hand. “Nadi,” he says, his voice low and soothing. “It’s alright, we’re all safe here—this is Muriel’s home. Muriel is...”

When Asra turns to indicate Muriel, the big man has already vanished from the doorway.

“He’s, uh. Shy.”

“And _where_ is this hut?” Nadia asks. “The outskirts of the grounds? To the west?”

She does not look at Asra for answers—instead her gaze turns to Kai.

Kai takes a deep breath. “We’re in the woods, Nadia,” she says, as gently as she can. “Outside… outside Vesuvia.”

Nadia stares her down, her expression utterly unreadable. “Outside Vesuvia,” she says, after an agonizing silence.

Kai nods, slowly.

Nadia’s eyes grow wide, and she stays still only a moment longer. Kai blinks, and Nadia is charging past Asra, who wisely clears the door and makes room for her.

Kai follows.

Nadia stands mere steps outside Muriel’s home. The forest is dense here, the trees old and wizened and gnarled, but Nadia is looking up regardless. Kai stands at her side, and follows her gaze through the thick branches and still-dripping leaves, up at a small, barely-visible patch of grey sky.

“We’re… we’re not in the palace.”

Kai looks back at Nadia. There are tears brimming in her beautiful red eyes.

“We’re not in the palace,” Nadia says again, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

Kai finds herself peering through the trees at the sky herself, as if she might see something other than a patch of grey. “We’re not even in _Vesuvia_.”

Nadia laughs—bright, and unreserved, and when Kai looks back over at her she is grinning, even as she touches the corners of her eyes with her fingertips.

“I believe we covered that,” she teases, lightly.

Overhead, Kai hears the beats of great, wide wings, followed by the call of some bird. She looks up, wide-eyed, and there is a pale owl, the one she thought she had seen when Muriel was carrying her, rapidly dropping towards them.

Nadia lets out a breath. “Chandra,” she says, softly. “Is that—are you—”

The great owl tries to land on the arm Nadia raises, as if by instinct, for her. She sinks right through Nadia’s form, and snaps her beak repeatedly in irritation as she furiously flaps her cream-and-lavender wings, clearly displeased until she lands on a low-hanging branch right by Nadia’s face.

The owl shifts back and forth on the branch, cooing repeatedly, blinking her eyes slowly to display how happy she is as Nadia runs her hands over the bird’s feathers.

Chandra shivers, probably feeling the same electric charge Kai does every time Nadia touches her.

“I thought you were gone,” Nadia says to the owl, softly. “And you can—oh, my friend, I missed you so.”

Kai hears movement behind her, and turns. Asra is standing nearby, holding the emerald in his hand, while Muriel looms over his shoulder, scowling a little less than usual. Asra watches Nadia and the owl with a warm, if somewhat sad, smile.

He catches Kai looking, and the smile simply grows warmer.

When Nadia finally turns, it is to regard Asra with a careful eye. “How did Chandra get here?” she asks. “Everyone at the palace claimed she simply vanished the night I…”

 _Died_ , Kai thinks. She glances over at Nadia, and tries not to notice that she can see the surrounding trees through her friend.

Asra only looks at Muriel, who shifts uncomfortably under everyone’s gaze.

“Found her in the woods,” he supplies, gruffly. “Hurt. Brought her here, fixed her up. She comes back sometimes. To visit.”

Kai notices now that the chickens have scattered. She thinks she sees a few of them hiding under some overturned logs.

“Thank you,” Nadia says to Muriel. “Chandra is… she’s my closest friend.”

Muriel looks very much like he would like to crawl under a log with the chickens. He shrugs, in a way that somehow says, _Least I could do_ , before simply turning around and walking away.

“What an odd lad,” Nadia wonders.

“Don’t worry,” Asra says. “He knows you’re grateful. He’s just shy.”

Chandra coos some more, and Nadia returns to smoothing down her feathers, even as her brow begins to furrow in confusion. “Kai,” she wonders, “how did this happen? The last thing I remember, that fiend was about to accost you, and…”

Kai can only shake her head.

“I think I have an idea.”

Kai and Nadia turn back to Asra, and he holds up the gleaming emerald necklace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warning for insects, near drowning experience.**


	10. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reversed Justice card can suggest that internally, you know that you’ve done something that isn’t morally right. Others may not know about it yet, so you have a choice – you can either hide it and hope no-one finds out, or you can own up to your mistakes and take focused action to resolve the situation. [[x](https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/major-arcana/justice/)]

When they are all sitting down on the great tree roots outside Muriel’s home, Chandra perched on a branch above Nadia’s head and Cinis curled up on Kai’s lap, Asra tries his best to explain Nadia’s situation.

“Do you remember where you got this emerald, Nadi?” he asks, holding it up. To his eye, it’s lit with a strange inner light—his magic, Kai’s, and Nadia’s spirit, all mingling together—but he suspects to Kai and Nadia it looks simply like an exceptionally shiny gemstone.

Once again, Nadia bristles at the nickname. His heart can’t help but sink, just a little, each time she does.

“I do not,” she replies. Back to cold and distant, and eyeing him warily, now that the excitement of Chandra’s return has worn off.

Well, he thinks, glancing at Kai. Better than a bottle of leeches aimed at his head.

“I gave it to you,” he says. “About a year and a half ago, now.”

A look of surprise flashes across Nadia’s features before she quickly schools it, furrowing her brows in his direction once more.

“I see.”

“How far back _do_ you remember, Nadi?”

She hesitates a moment, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Asra, before she eventually glances sideways at Kai.

“It okay, Nadia,” Kai says, gently. “He wants to help.”

He watches Nadia think on it, a moment longer. Watches her consider Kai, and then him once again, in turn, with an intensity to her gaze that is at once familiar and utterly alien.

“I do not remember anything between walking through the gates of Vesuvia for the first time, and waking up one year ago… Like this.”

She gestures to herself, translucent enough that Asra can see through her to the tree roots she’s sitting on with impeccable posture. Next to her, Kai is solid, barefoot, her legs crossed and her back slightly slouched in a way that is so _Kai_ and so unlike _Kalani_ that Asra feels… lost, for half a heartbeat.

They do not remember him at all. Either of them.

“I’m sorry, Nadi,” he says, softly. “That’s… that’s a long time to lose.”

Kai’s frown when she looks at him borders on inquisitive, and he wonders if she’s noticed that the sorrow in his voice is not entirely for Nadia’s sake.

“We met for the first time when you arrived in Vesuvia seven years ago,” Asra begins, tangling the chain of the necklace absently in his fingers. “The same day I met Kai.”

Kai’s eyes grow wide, and she leans forward a little.

“I was reading fortunes behind the shop. It… it belonged to your aunt at the time, Kai.”

He watches her closely for what Julian told him are signs of an impending _episode_ , but she only seems curious, and eager to hear more.

“ _That’s_ why none of the labels match your writing,” she blurts, grinning for a moment before biting her lip—something Kalani used to do, whenever she felt the urge to interrupt someone.

He nods, finding her smile infectious. “You had just arrived in the city, Nadi,” Asra continues, “and I don’t know why, but you stopped by my booth for a tarot reading.”

Nadia’s eyes narrow—but this time it seems she is considering something, instead of glaring at him. “My sisters and I used to read tarot to one another when we were children,” she says, after a moment. “I… I doubt I was looking for a genuine fortune at all, but rather indulging in childhood memories.”

Nadia’s expression turns wistful, and he wonders if perhaps her explanation isn’t influenced by her loneliness over the last year. _Homesick_ , Asra thinks, but does not say.

“Whatever the reason, you didn’t like the reading very much.”

Her eyes snap up to his again. “Oh? And what _was_ my reading?”

He swallows. _Miss—I mean, my lady. Or. Yeah. I… Whatever you’ve got planned? I don’t think it’s going to work out the way you want._

“I don’t remember,” he lies.

Nadia doesn’t appear to believe him, but does not press the matter.

“We met again after the plague started, in the palace.”

“Yes, I had heard—you were one of the magicians researching a cure for the plague.”

“There were more?” Kai wonders. “I thought magic was illegal.”

“It wasn’t then,” Asra explains. “Loads of magicians used to work at the palace. They helped maintain the grounds, the library, and were crucial in Lucio’s masquerades every year.”

“The servants at the palace are all deeply concerned that there will be no magic at this year’s celebration,” Nadia supplies. “Something about a bubble room?”

Whatever Lucio announced to the public, Asra seriously doubts there will actually be a masquerade this year.

“But I digress,” Nadia says. “The emerald, Asra.”

“We became… unlikely friends.” Asra can’t help but smile at the memory. “I was… hm. Ilya would call it _slacking off_ under a willow tree in the garden.”

“And what would _you_ call it?”

 _Mourning._ “Taking a nap. I woke up to something very unexpected—a Countess, looking for a quiet place to eat her dinner. You asked if I would like to join you.”

“And so we struck up an unlikely and eternal friendship,” Nadia deadpans, as if she doesn’t quite believe him.

Asra smiles to hide the pang of disappointment in his chest. “We bonded over making fun of your husband,” he admits.

 _That_ makes Nadia smile, finally.

“Some time later, you… confessed that you felt lost. We all did, with the plague the way it was going—I had this emerald I’d received in return for blessing a ship on the docks, and I thought it might help filter out some of the negative energy in the palace, and help you focus. I imbued it with some of my magic, and gave it to you.”

That it’s also a stone of loyalty, friendship, and love, Asra does not say—and the omission curls in his chest uneasily.

Faust, sensing his distress, rubs her head against his cheek.

“Kai, you said that the guard shoved you through Nadia?”

Kai nods.

“Interesting. Oh, Kai, can you take this,” he says, holding out the amulet, “pick a direction, and just start walking?”

She shoos Cinis off her lap, and then takes the emerald from Asra as she stands. “Any direction?”

“Yeah, anywhere.”

“When do I stop?”

“You’ll know.” He smiles up at her, and she smiles back, looking a little uncertain, before she starts to walk off, picking her way  carefully through the undergrowth with her bare feet and Cinis trailing along behind her.

“The magic in the amulet was designed to help you focus, Nadi,” Asra explains. “I meant to offer you another tool to help you meditate while you were in your Contemplation Tower.”

“My what?” Nadia asks, brows furrowing,

Asra hesitates. “Your… Your Contemplation Tower. You used to go there to be alone, and to think…”

“Where is it?” she wonders. “What does it look like?”

“The door was in your room, but…” Asra can only shrug helplessly. “You never let anyone in. You haven’t been there at all, Nadi?”

Nadia’s eyes narrow as she considers Asra—but whatever her thoughts, she keeps them to herself. “I know the door,” she says at length, somewhat guarded. “Go on.”

Her expression leaves no room for further questioning, so Asra can only sigh. “When you came in contact with the emerald, the magic in it attempted to help focus your mind and spirit—and, since you are made up of nothing else, at the moment, you were pulled into the emerald. Tell me, Nadi, what happens when you try to leave the palace?”

“I cannot,” she replies. “It’s like there is simply a wall, keeping me in, even though I see nothing.”

“Interesting,” Asra muses. “If you were bound to a place in the palace, I would expect you to be pulled back to it each time you tried to leave.”

Nadia’s brow raises, and he catches a glimmer of interest in her eyes. The lure of a puzzle that requires solving—and all at once his heart eases a little, at such a familiar sight. “I suspect you are about to tell me the difference between being _bound to_ something, and _trapped_ there.”

“Am I far enough yet?” Kai yells.

“Keep going!” Asra calls. To Nadia, he says, “A binding, as we have just learned, can often be unintentional. I did not mean for the emerald to act as a host for your consciousness—but under a few special circumstances, that’s exactly what happened.”

“Whereas a trap,” Nadia finishes, eyes growing wide, “implies intent.”

“Precisely.”

There is a flash of light, and Nadia vanishes from sight. Asra counts on his fingers—one, two, three, four…

In the distance, where Kai wandered off, there is a flash of light. He hears Nadia’s voice, dimly—“So you are saying that someone is keeping me in the palace, but what could be their intent—”

Kai shrieks, followed immediately by the sound of branches snapping and leaves rustling, and then a _thud_.

Asra laughs, and slowly gets to his feet. “Come on, Faust,” he says. “Let’s go pull Kai out of the bushes.”

 

It takes some convincing to get Nadia to intentionally reside within the emerald.

Nearly as much as it takes to get Kai to leave the city behind.

“I don’t see why,” Nadia says with an uneasy glance down at the emerald Kai is once again wearing. “If Kai goes too far, I will simply reappear near her.”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to ride with us,” Asra admits. “And we don’t know many times the emerald can pull you back to it before it runs out of power.”

“Ride?” Kai parrots. She’s walking at Asra’s side, her hand raised so the tips of the tall grass stalks they’re walking through brush against her palm with each stride. “What could we be riding that Nadia can’t ride with us?”

Nadia raises a brow at their surroundings. She’s on Kai’s other side, and the grass she passes through moves as If a breeze has touched it. “I doubt it is a cart or a wagon, or we wouldn’t be wandering through a grassy field in the dead of night to find it.”

“And where are we going?” Kai glances uneasily behind them, in the direction of the city. They can’t see it for the clouds in the sky, but Asra knows that on a clear day the palace’s towers would be visible from here. “Is Julian going to be alright?”

Nadia is quick to reassure Kai. “Lucio can’t hurt the man keeping him alive, Kai. Even he’s not that foolish.”

“There’s more than one way to hurt a person,” Kai says, her voice soft and distant.

“Which is why we need to get you _away_ from the city,” Asra tells her. “Lucio is using you to get to me, _and_ to torment Ilya. This might be our only chance to get you away from him.”

“I agree with Asra,” Nadia says. “Valdemar will have told Lucio what happened. You were already accused of witchcraft, and now you’ve assaulted a guard, _and_ a courtier, _and_ broken a prisoner out of the palace. It’s far too dangerous for you to return to the city.”

Kai’s mouth twists. She runs her thumb over the lepidolite pendant, and does not respond.

Unable to help himself, Asra reaches over and takes her other hand. Like he always used to do, when she got lost in thought like this. He twines his fingers in hers, and lets his aura brush against hers, reassuringly.

“I don’t like it. We should be doing… something.” She takes a breath, then admits, “It feels like running away.”

He squeezes her hand. “Your magic is getting stronger,” he tells her, softly, “but you’re still lacking in control. You can’t help anyone if you don’t know how to give your magic direction.”

“I helped _you_.”

“And I’m grateful, Kai, believe me. But do you think Ilya wants you to hurt yourself trying to protect him?”

She bites her lip. He knows, by the way her expression falls, that she’s thinking of the fire at the docks, not the beetles in the cave.

“One day,” Asra says. “Give me one day, and if you really want to go back to Vesuvia, I’ll take you back.”

The smile she gives him in return is grateful, and uncomplicated in its sincerity.

His heart twists, and he wonders which of the many promises he has made in the last few days he will actually manage to keep.

He _keeps_ wondering it, too. While Kai sniffs the beast they will ride, and while Nadia admits that travelling within the emerald is probably safest. While he closes his eyes and checks on Muriel through Faust’s eyes.

While he helps Kai mount, and even as his hand lingers on her waist longer than necessary... Even while he climbs up behind her, and wraps his arm around her to make fists in the beast’s fur, he finds he cannot revel in how close they are. Even with her back pressed to his front, even when she turns to look at him, excitement gleaming in her eyes, he finds his heart heavy as he smiles back.

He wants nothing more than to close the distance between his lips and hers, so small that he can feel her breath on his skin.

But she would not be smiling at him right now, if she knew they were leaving Julian to die.

 

It is… _unsettling_ , this ‘residing in the emerald’ business.

Almost as much as being dead and not knowing how it happened, but that’s neither here nor there.

One moment, she is leaning forward, reaching to touch the surface of the emerald with a single, slender finger. There is some great beast to her left, and grass sways in the wind around her.

The next, she is withdrawing. Her feet are on uneven, shifting sand, and the air around her is still.

Kai looks windswept and exhausted. Her hair is a mess and there are heavy bags under her eyes, and she has clearly been chewing her lip with worry, though she stops the moment Nadia meets her gaze. Her shoulders slump, and she slowly smiles, relief sweeping over her features.

“It worked,” she says.

Nadia straightens, and looks around her. They appear to be in a desert, in the dead of night—or perhaps the very early morning. There is a small mud-and-wood home nearby on a small hill, with a well-tended garden of healthy cacti surrounding it.

“How do you feel, Nadi?” Asra asks. He’s standing near Kai, and behind them both the strange beast they rode to get here is slowly ambling its way up the hill, its snout low to the ground, as if sniffing for something. “Any dizziness? Disorientation?”

“I am fine, thank you,” she informs him, coolly. “Your… friend appears to be looking for something, however.”

Asra’s eyes grow wide, and then he flushes. “Right,” he says, clearly embarrassed. “Water.”

Nadia watches him go with narrowed eyes, but he only jogs up the little hill and disappears behind some of the tall cacti. He speaks to the beast a little, but his tone is low enough that she can’t make out what he is saying.

“Kai,” Nadia whispers, “did he do anything to you while I was—”

But Kai is looking up at the sky, her lips parted, and her eyes wide with wonder and a smile slowly spreading across her face. Nadia frowns at her expression a moment, before lifting her gaze.

The night sky is clear, and filled with stars.

It… it takes Nadia a moment to reconcile _sky_ with _clear_. She has spent the last year looking out of windows, or peering through curtains, and seeing only grey days, and brackish nights. A sky where the moon and sun alike are obscured, by smoke or by clouds.

Here, far away from the Lazaret, from the tall spires of the palace that has been her whole world for a year, the whole sky is lit up. Thousands of stars stretch across the sky, culminating in a single bright streak down the middle, interspersed with cloud-like nebulas of purples and blues that range from white to black. She follows the line it makes across, down, to the horizon where she sees a sliver of the sunrise, making silhouettes of distant mountains.

“There’s so many,” Kai says, as if speaking will break the moment but she cannot contain it any longer. “Nadia, were there always so many? This whole time?”

Nadia hears soft footsteps on the sand—and she glances over to see Asra approaching, his hands in his pockets.

He does not take his eyes off Kai, even for a moment—all the way from the house to the road they stand on, he watches her with a smile that seems torn between fondness and sorrow.

He catches Nadia looking, and his smile turns easy and friendly in the single beat of a heart.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many,” Nadia answers, softly. “Too much light in the cities where I’ve lived, I suppose.”

Asra stands next to Kai and turns his gaze skyward. Nadia watches his eyes soften, and his shoulders relax. As if he’s seen this exact sight a thousand times, but has never truly _looked_ at it until now.

Kai grabs his hand. She tries to grab at Nadia’s, too, but her hand just passes through, and Nadia only feels like a warm breeze has rushed through her. “Look,” she says, pointing. “If you make a line, those ones look like Faust!”

Nadia leans in close to follow Kai’s pointing finger—and she finds herself smiling, recognising the cluster of stars overhead, a jagged line streaking across the sky. “That is known in the oldest tales as a great sea serpent,” she says. “Then later, a hydra, its severed heads scattered across the sky.”

“What’s a hydra?” Kai wonders, never for a moment taking her eyes off the sky.

“A terrible beast felled by a hero,” Nadia answers her. “Or rather, a man who was flawed, but had great power.”

“Why did he have to kill it?” Kai wonders. “And… you said heads? It had more than one?”

Nadia can’t help a laugh. “It’s… quite a long story, Kai. And I’m not certain I remember all of it…”

Kai gives her an embarrassed smile. “I don’t mind,” she says, softly.

“I know it.”

Nadia glances over at Asra. He is smiling easily now, his hair as pale as the stars that light up the sky around them. His posture is relaxed, but there is something in his gaze that she finds… piercing. Intense. Perhaps a little sad.

“I could help you tell it, if you like,” he offers.

She stares at him and wonders if they were friends once, as he claims. With a smile, she says, “Thank you, Asra, that would be lovely.”

Asra brings them to the roof of the little house, where he has a small fire pit, although it does not appear to have been used for some time, having been filled over with sand blown in from the desert around them. Asra does not light it—instead Kai pulls a shawl out of her bag, and Asra pulls his coat tight around himself, and they lie back on blankets Asra pulled up from the house. He even brings up one for Nadia. It is, she notes, the most elegant of the three, a deep indigo with white accents—and though she does not need it, cannot even feel it at her back as she lies down, she finds herself touched by the sentiment.

Nadia and Asra start the tale, once they are all settled. And Nadia finds she remembers more of it, as it goes—how many labours, and the details of each of the battles, and each challenge the hero faced.

“Why did he have to kill them, though?” Kai wonders, halfway through the tale.

Nadia turns her head so she can see Kai’s expression. She’s making an odd face, a disappointed twist to her lips, her brow furrowed, as she stares up at the sky.

“They were monsters, Kai,” Nadia says.

Kai hums thoughtfully. “The only monsters I’ve known have been people,” she says, after a moment.

On Kai’s other side, Asra stares up the stars, his jaw tight and his eyes dark.

The wind picks up—Nadia doesn’t feel it, but she hears the hiss of sand rushing across sand, and watches some scatter across the roof around them. Kai shivers, and pulls her shawl closer around herself.

Asra shifts a little closer—and Kai immediately moves closer in kind, resting her head on his chest as he puts an arm under her neck, and over her shoulders.

Nadia watches them for a moment longer than she should, before she once again turns her gaze to the stars. She tries not to think of the blanket she does not feel, the world around her that never seems to grow warmer or colder, and she tries not to think of the last time she touched another living thing.

“Nadi.”

She glances back over. Asra had spoken, but it is Kai’s arm that is reaching, her palm facing towards the sky.

“You look cold,” Kai murmurs through the shawl she’s pulled up to her face.

Nadia huffs a single, somewhat miserable laugh. “I don’t feel cold.”

Kai pokes her nose out of the shawl. “Lonely, then.”

Nadia feels her cheeks grow warm. “I don’t know what you mean,” she says, her traitor voice rising a little no matter how sternly she tries to speak. “I have more company here than I have had in the last year of my—in the last year.”

“I have an idea,” Asra says. “Kai, take the necklace off. The emerald one.”

Kai rustles around under her shawl for a moment, and her hand reaches out and she puts the emerald on the blanket behind her head.

“Nadi,” Asra says. His voice is soft, and fond, and low. “Come join us.”

Nadia stares at him. “I’ll just sink through you,” she says.

“Not through us. Through _Kai_.”

Nadia stares at him a moment. “What?”

Kai sits up, and Asra follows suit. “Wait,” she says, softly. “I don’t understand. Like, possess me?”

“Not _possession_.” Asra is smiling, his cheeks dimpled. “Just… occupying the same space.”

“Oh. Like when the guard pushed me through you.”

“Because _that_ went well.” Nadia finds herself worrying at her hair, and immediately puts her hands in her lap. “No, I—I don’t see what it would accomplish. Thank you for the offer, Asra, but I am quite—”

“Nadia,” Kai says.

Nadia glances, uncertainly, back at Kai. But Kai is only giving her a reassuring smile, with starlight reflecting in her eyes.

“It won’t hurt to try.”

Nadia takes a deep breath. And then slowly, she gathers her skirts in one hand and stands, moving to stand directly in front of Kai.

Kai reaches for her with one hand, palm facing up. Nadia moves to take her hand—and she hesitates, her spectral fingertips resting a hair’s breadth above Kai’s palm. She marvels, as she has every rare moment she gets this close to Kai, at the _warmth_ that seems to radiate out of her. Like every memory Nadia has of sunlight, or of sitting close to the fire, has found a home in the magician fate or fortune has thrown into her life.

Kai curls her fingers around Nadia’s, her eyes wide as she regards her, her lips slightly parted, and Nadia feels a pang of remorse.

Oh, if she were still alive… What she would do, to see starlight in Kai’s eyes, every single night.

Nadia tries to smile. “What indeed,” she says, her voice thick.

She kneels, and as one Kai and Asra lean back. They settle on the ground, and Nadia settles over Kai, on her hands and knees. She admires the subtle darkening of Kai’s cheeks as Kai’s eyes widen—and with a glance over at Asra, she finds his blush to be even more spectacular as he looks between them, wide eyed.

 _Oh?_ She can’t help but raise a single brow at him, but he busies himself with looking up at the stars while Kai gets properly settled, resting her head on his shoulder once more.

And she wonders, not for the first time, what exactly her relationship with Asra was before her death.

She watches his throat as he swallows, and thinks she’s starting to get the picture.

“Okay Nadia,” Kai says. “I’m… I’m ready.”

Nadia turns as she settles on the ground, feeling a soft, slow-burning warmth rush over her as she passes through Kai. As she makes their shoulders match as best she can, and bends her knees, she can feel Kai’s warmth spreading through her. Kai shivers, from the cold or something else Nadia isn’t sure, while Nadia props her head up on one arm so she can “rest” her head on Asra’s shoulder.

Where Kai is warm, like lying in the Prakran sun, Asra is the cool ocean breeze rushing over her. Nadia’s eyes flutter closed, and it’s _almost_ like she’s there again. Lying in the sand, surrounded by sun and warmth, while the wind comes off the water and teases at the strands of her hair she hadn’t quite tied back properly.

“You alright, Nadi?”

She opens her eyes to see Asra watching her, his brow furrowing with concern.

She takes a deep breath. “I am… I am well,” she answers, tentatively. “Kai?”

Kai sighs. “Feels nice,” she mumbles into Asra’s shoulder.

Asra laughs, soft and low, and Nadia can’t help but join him.

Kai’s breaths eventually slow, and she falls asleep as the sun rises over the mountains, slowly chasing the stars out of the sky.

“We should get her to bed,” Nadia whispers, softly, into the comfortable silence that has fallen between them.

Asra lets out a breath that almost sounds like a reluctant sigh. “A little longer, Nadi,” he whispers back. “Please.”

His voice wavers on the _please_.

It is strange, but… she doesn’t have the heart to deny him.

“Of course,” she replies. “Take the time you need.”

His breath shudders. She glances up at him, but his gaze is turned skyward again, and she cannot make out his expression.

Starlight catches in the tears running down his cheeks.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Nadi,” he whispers in a soft confession. “None of this. All I wanted…”

She does not know what to say. Neither does he—his throat closes up, as if there is simply _too much_ , and he cannot decide where to even begin.

And Nadia wants to be patient—but all around her, Kai shivers, curling tighter into Asra’s side in her sleep.

“Let’s get Kai inside,” she suggests, gently.

Asra carries her, and Nadia trails close by his side. The interior of the home is small, but clean and comfortable. There are more plants inside, many of them clearly not meant to live in a desert, and when she reaches out to touch the leaf of one she can _almost_ feel it—kept alive by magic, she assumes.

There is a bed with soft looking blankets at the back of the house,  surrounded by books and even more plants. Asra tucks Kai in there, and Nadia lingers in the doorway while he fusses over her, a little. While he brushes her hair away from her face, and lets the backs of his fingers linger a little too long on her brow.

With a _mrr_ , Cinis jumps onto the bed. The cat gives Asra a rather pointed glare, and flicks his tail a few times, before pawing a gap big enough in the covers for him to crawl under, where he presumably sleeps at Kai’s side.

Asra brews a cup of tea in silence. Nadia runs her fingers through the steam from the water left in the kettle, watching the strange shapes it makes as it passes through her fingers, while Asra sits at a small table, his fingers curling around a simple ceramic cup.

“We were lovers,” Asra admits, finally breaking the silence.

Nadia turns and looks at him over her shoulder.

He stares, unblinking, into his tea.

“You and Kai?” Nadia prompts, when he does not continue.

He lets out a breath. “Yes,” he whispers. “And then… you and I, while I was trying to bring her back.”

Nadia feels—well. Not _entirely_ surprised, but there is something about the way he said…

“Bring her back? From where?”

Asra closes his eyes. His shoulders tense, as if he is warring with himself—but he lets out a long, slow breath, and bit by bit the taut lines of his body begin to relax.

“One year, six months, and five days ago, Kai died. The night of the masquerade, I brought her back.”

Nadia swallows. “The same night I died.”

“That just it, Nadi.” He opens his eyes and looks up at her. “I don’t think you _did_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey let's pretend I've actually been writing instead of just randomly deciding this was a good enough chapter end and calling it a day.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [playwithdinos](http://playwithdinos.tumblr.com/) or [dinoswrites](http://dinoswrites.tumblr.com/).


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